Stanek weekend question: What do you think of the Doonesbury “ultrasound is rape” series?
This was the week that wasn’t for the Doonesbury “ultrasound = rape” cartoon series in about 70 newspapers across the country. Several other newspapers only ran portions of the series, appearing to have to the most trouble with Thursday’s strip.
Now that the dust has settled, what do you think about Gary Trudeau’s political commentary on the topic? Click to enlarge…
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Funny how Trudeau doesn’t end with the abortion. That would be the logical liberal conclusion, IMO: “She went through with it anyway.” But let’s not focus on the real atrocity, just the fake one.
In interviews last week Trudeau mentioned the only previous series he had spiked was a mockery of the pro-life documentary, Silent Scream, in 1985, which shows an abortion on ultrasound (and which somehow provides symmetry to this week’s series, doesn’t it?).
Trudeau decided to rerelease that series, which you can view here. It’s an ironic series, because we are today debating abortifacients that kill babies conceived “12 minutes ago,” so to speak, as well as embryo research.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
abortion doesnt belong in a cartoon.
Doonesbury is still running?
I’ve had a vaginal ultra sound. I’ve been raped. Trudeau should be ashamed of himself. It isn’t the same thing. Not. even. close.
1, it’s not funny
2. it’s not accurate
3. it insults countless women who were actually raped
4. it tells something when abortionists have to be forced by law to use ultrasound before abortion, when they should have been using it already anyway as a part of their job!
The same thing I think about all Doonesbury strips: I hate it and the author is a moron.
Trudeau has run the most annoying, unfunny, inaccurate “cartoon” for as far back as I can remember. I am utterly astonished he’s still managing to sell any.
I think Gary Trudeau must have been desperate to bring attention to his crappy comic strip.
What this is really about is what’s demonstrated in the last panel; seeing the baby. The overwhelming majority of women choose life when they see their baby and pro-abortion advocates don’t want to see the abortion numbers go down.
Hey lady,
If your doctor can’t identify the parts of your embryo/fetus for as far along as you are (which entails he is also unable to determine gestational age, something integral to the abortion procedure), you’re putting yourself in danger. How badly do you want your baby dead?
Utterly moronic. If this had been a comic strip about the death penalty or baby seal clubbing, libs would be shrieking in protest.
Is there a way those who have been raped can contact him and tell him how completely offensive this ultrasound-is-rape analogy is? I have never been raped, but I have friends who have and they are outraged.
Tomorrow morning by now will be a whole grouping of half-truths put together in the form of comics which folks on this board will love, approve, and joke about.
They are a form of political commentary where somebody tries to push a point.
I personally don’t read the weekly comics, so this is the first time I’ve seen the whole series. It definitely stretches the truth and goes over the top in regards to the Thursday rape one.
In regards to the old GOP men running the show – I think that is a perception that is really sticking out there – especially coupled with the GOP panel with all guys on it.
The finally-getting-attention-after-decades-of-obscurity-while-taking-up-panels-any-other-artist-would-be-more-worthy-to-fill cartoonist
has done a huge disservice to women everywhere. The ultrasound, good technology, used for multiple purposes, is now a caricature. Women will fear this ordinary diagnostic tool and yes lives can be lost. Great job conducting your actual war on women and children while trying to deflect the blame onto a political party. All of you who support him and/or the feminazi rumor-mongering machine, all of you have blood on your hands for the women who will be injured and possibly killed when they adamantly refuse to let doctors use it.
I have had a vaginal ultrasound. Slightly uncomfortable but frankly more comfortable than a pap smear. After the ultrasound I never gave it a second thought. I was much too excited to see my 5 week old baby son. I could make out his arms, legs, head, heartbeat, body… not a speck and a dot.
I have had friends who were raped. Believe me they gave their rapes a second thought. It hurt them physically and emotionally and spiritually. It was something they struggled to overcome.
To equate a vaginal ultrasound to rape is outrageous!!! The feminists should be UP IN ARMS over this. Yet they are not. Very telling where their true priorities lie.
If Limbaugh’s statements are protected free speech, then certainly Trudeau’s cartoons are.
(*sigh*) Doonesbury, eh?
As an aside: at least Berke Breathed (of “Bloom County” fame), though I disagreed with him on roughly 99% of what he ever expressed, was usually *funny*. Perhaps Gary Trudeau is a laugh-a-minute, in person; but honestly, his Doonesbury strip is roughly as funny as a sinus infection.
@Steven: Way to miss the point. Look at the thread. Do you see anyone calling for the government to step in and shut Trudeau up? No. Because he does have a constitutional right to be a moron in public. What he doesn’t have a constitutional right to do is force everyone else not to criticize him for it. To his face, to each other, to the papers that carry his “cartoons.” Nor does he have a right to an audience for his “comics.” You have the right to speak freely, not to make everyone else like what you say.
*Sexual Battery: Forced oral, anal, or vaginal penetration by any object, except when these acts are performed for bona fide medical purposes.
Enough with all the outrage about comparing this to rape. Fine you don’t like the rape comparison??? Then call it what is, the legal definition of sexual battery as defined above. And don’t give me the bona fide medical purpose argument. A woman doesn’t need it done to go through with an abortion. It is offensive to women and the state of Texas should be ashamed.
A women doesn’t need to go through with an abortion either and would avoid the ultrasound requirement by not having an abortion. As far as being ashamed, the only thing to be ashamed about is the continuing legality of abortion.
Hey Jake,
Do you know how many women have died because their doctors DIDN’T give them the (recommended under National Abortion Federation provider guidelines) ultrasound before abortions where they just had their uteri scraped out and were sent on their way…All the while their ectopic pregnancies which went undetected as a consequence became ready to rupture?
There’s a reason abortionists do not do ultrasounds. It makes women want to see their babies, which in turn makes them less likely to go through with the abortion. There’s a reason abortionists are SUPPOSED to provide ultrasounds. It saves the lives of women going in for abortions who have an incorrectly guessed gestational age as well as things like ectopic pregnancies or placenta previa.
So, yeah. Necessary. Do you know much about being pregnant, Jake?
Jake,
So the 83% of NAF member clinics that required vaginal ultrasounds on early abortion patients prior to the legislation have been committing sexual battery this whole time?
Jake says:
“And don’t give me the bona fide medical purpose argument.”
Why not, Jake? “You can’t handle the TRUTH”?
I remember when ultrasound was grainy and difficult to see. My mom, when she was pregnant, would bring copies of the ultrasound images to show us, because they were so neat. That was the first image I ever had of either of my little sisters (the second of whom died). Not specks. The image was grainy, but no one can tell the nine-year-old me that I was looking at “little specks”, aside from the specks caused by the poor quality of the image. Those were babies. And they were adorable. And Mom never regretted one ultrasound she had. Or one pregnancy.
A child can see more on an ultrasound than this “doctor” in this “comic”.
“Why not, Jake? “You can’t handle the TRUTH”?”
The TRUTH is that every single person who has expressed support for mandatory ultrasound legislation has made it plainly clear that their one and only purpose is dissuading pregnant women from having abortions, period.
Ex-RINO says: March 17, 2012 at 12:31 pm
“In regards to the old GOP men running the show – I think that is a perception that is really sticking out there – especially coupled with the GOP panel with all guys on it.”
===============================================================
Never mind that the OFFICIAL congressional committee was made up of both republicans and democRATs and there were women in the second panel who provided ‘EXPERT TESTIMONY’ under oathe.
This does not fit the template constructed by hysterical feministas, dead babies r us democRATs and their willing accomplices in the lame scream media.
Mark Steyn illustrated this absuridity in his opening monologue when he was guest hosting the Rush Limbaugh show, describing himself as:
“Your foreign mercenary in the republican war on women.”
Thinking women and men everywhere laughed in hillarious agreement with Steyn’s spot on mocking sarcasm.
Whores everywhere turned up their noses in feined indignance.
[I use the term ‘whore’ in a non-gender specific fashion.]
And never mind that missy Phluck spoke to a bunch of simpering democRATs calculatingly cobbled into a facade deliberately designed to give the uninformed viewer the impression that this was a real congressional hearing and missy Phluck was testifying under oathe.
To describe it as poor gorilla theatre would be a gross overstatement.
Reminded me of a scene from the BBC production of ‘I Claudius’ where the Emperor’s wife has challenged the cities most notorious prostitute to a contest of endurance.
Minesta, an actor and one of Messalina’s bed mates, arranges the contest but he lacks the capital to finance the event.
Scylla, realizing Minesta expects her to perform for free, sidesteps the progressive pimp and negotiates directly with the madame.
Messalina, woman of the world that she is, bails out the progressive Minesta, and pick up the tab herself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp1mk9bdsdM
Minesta: Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Minesta, I am an actor and most people have heard of me.
Scylla: My name is Scylla and I am a whore. Everybodies heard of me.
Minesta: Allow me to introduce you to the lady Messalina, your challenger and the emperor’s wife.
This is Scylla the Sicilian….. and anybody’s wife.
Scylla: The difference between you and me actor and is you are a snob and I am not
and the difference between this great lady and myself is that my work is her hobby.
joan, so what you’re saying is that they all support a good cause for a good reason.
Did anyone else have the same thought as I on the second strip already? She had been coming to the clinic for birth control. Now she needs an abortion. What happened to the birth control? Could it be that B.C. is nothing more than a false sense of security that makes people THINK the are having safe sex? Eventually it always fails and then they need an abortion. It seems an obvious conclusion that these clinics provide B.C. as a service to actually guarentee a stready clientele in need of abortions!
What do you think of the Doonesbury “ultrasound is rape” series?
I found the term ‘shaming wand’ mildly humorous.
The rest of the series is NOT funny.
Just hope the ‘dead babies r us’ mob keep using the same kind of ineffective, even counterproductive, strategies to ‘wooooooooooo’ women.
Now that is knee slapping, side splitting, wet your pants funny.
Their response to this legislation is similar to the Illinois Senate Bill 1663 – the one where Barack Obama took the floor to defend the conflicted of interest abortionists from continuing their hit-job when the child emerged alive and Obama seriously thought they would do the “right thing” and keep the intended target alive.
Abortionists are in the business of making money from abortion, and the last thing they want to see is clients walking out the door because an ultrasound shows them the reality of the growing child.
Although to be honest – there are a growing number of women who are so hardened of heart, they can kill the child far along in pregnancy and not think twice about it. Seriously.
Except it comes back hard on them down the road.
Trudeau is just another oppressor in the real war on women.
“The TRUTH is that every single person who has expressed support for mandatory ultrasound legislation has made it plainly clear that their one and only purpose is dissuading pregnant women from having abortions, period.”
^So true. HB 462 makes no reference to the health of the pregnant woman. The word “health” doesn’t appear anywhere in the document. Curious, no?
“A women doesn’t need to go through with an abortion either and would avoid the ultrasound requirement by not having an abortion.”
Well, at least we’re finally getting some intellectual honesty here. This bill has never been about advancing women’s health, and you and I both know it. But if you don’t think mandating the insertion of medical instruments inside women’s bodies isn’t at least a kind of symbolic rape, then consider that the rhetoric you just used mirrors the victim-shaming language used to silence rape victims. Don’t want to experience all the unpleasantness our retrograde legislators want to inflict upon you? Don’t get an abortion! You don’t want to get raped? Don’t wear a short skirt! Same difference.
ken the birther says: March 17, 2012 at 3:19 pm
“To describe it as poor gorilla theatre would be a gross overstatement.”
Correction:
To describe it as poor gorilla theatre would be a gross overstatement and an insult to poor gorillas everywhere.
[‘rich gorillas’, the one percenters [1%], who have to pay their fair share of the other 99% of gorillas’ health care, contraception and elective abortions.]
Megan, I don’t even know where to begin in responding to the hyperbole in what you just said. I will begin by noting that it is very offensive to actual rape victims. I will then go on to note that rape is a heinous act that is by definition forced on an individual against the victim’s will AND IN NO WAY IS THEIR FAULT. Abortion, on the other hand, is completely chosen by the person who has it. To me it seems reasonable that by consenting to something as unnecessary as this you are consenting to it you consent to any requirements the state deems necessary to go along with it. We wouldn’t even have to have discussions about this if abortion was illegal, which it should be.
Don’t want to be percieved as stupid.
Don’t think, speak, write or behave like Megan.
Elective abortion does not have anything more to with woman’s health care than a face lift, breast augmentation or a tummy tuck.
Elective abortion is not health care.
Pregnancy is NOT a sexually transmitted disease.
As a survivor or two rapes and a woman who has numerous internal ultrasounds for various reasons, I am disgusted, appalled and disheartened by this comic and people who compare rape to ultrasounds in any way, shape or form.
Especially women, who I expect to know better.
Symbolic rape? Shame, shame on you, Megan.
Imagine a poster with Megan’s image at the top and this slogan at the bottom:
“Being a progressive isn’t a political philosophy, it’s a personality disorder”…
abra cadaba, sheeezam, wah lah….
A poster child is born.
Trudeau is just another oppressor in the real war on women.
This seems the case to me. If you aren’t of his persuasion, then you are mocked and ridiculed. He is only for one kind of woman.
Although Megan, I do give you credit for admitting its only symbolic, not real rape.
I now also realize that above I said women where I should have said woman. I’m pretty bad with the typos today.
I should also add that this symbolic rape only exists in the minds of liberals.
Proaborts find TVUS ‘shaming’ but screech when shame is attached to the act of killing the unborn child? Could they get any stupider or more hypocritical? Way to re-victimize rape victims for the agenda, morons. What handy little political tools women are as you mouth breathers whine about the war on women. Wanna end the war? Shutting up and not using women as human shields for your demented ideology would be a good place to start.
Where are all you liberal feminist morons when yet another woman is raped at one of your OWS camps? Oh, that’s right-busy diverting attention and hoping no one will notice.
“am disgusted, appalled and disheartened by this comic and people who compare rape to ultrasounds in any way, shape or form.”
No, you don’t get to have a monopoly on victimhood here. You aren’t the only woman who has been mistreated at the hands of a man, and certainly not the only rape survivor with opinions about the ultrasound mandate (yes, that’s right–we’re not talking about ultrasounds in general, but ultrasounds MANDATED by a group of lawmakers, with absolutely no reference to the health of the mother AT ALL).
On the pro-choice side of the river, we don’t respond to getting manipulated, or yelled, or hit by our partners by fiercely trying to regulate what happens inside other women’s bodies. YOU should be ashamed at your pathetic attempts to regain control of your own life.
“To me it seems reasonable that by consenting to something as unnecessary as this you are consenting to it you consent to any requirements the state deems necessary to go along with it.”
Oh yes, it’s “very reasonable” for the state to pass laws to regulate medical practice that have nothing to do with advancing the health of the person seeking care. How well would you respond to a bill that required all pregnant women to watch a video of “An Inconvenient Truth” at their first visit for prenatal care?
Oh, and I find it hilarious that wingnuts who persist in comparing abortion to the Holocaust despite the protests of people who find it incredibly offensive (including many, many, many individuals of the Jewish faith) are all up in arms about the particularly colorful rhetoric used to oppose this stupid ultrasound bill.
How well would you respond to a bill that required all pregnant women to watch a video of “An Inconvenient Truth” at their first visit for prenatal care?
Another one for the MPQs.
A poster child indeed, Ken.
Jake, sooooo…if a doctor tells a woman who wants him to perform an abortion on her, that she MUST have a vaginal ultrasound before he will consent to doing the abortion, and she doesn’t want the ultrasound but really really wants the abortion…are you then saying that doctor has raped the woman? That that abortionist is guilty of sexual battery?
Because Jill already pointed out on this site that there are a number of abortion clinics already mandating that patients MUST have a vaginal ultrasound before their abortion. You ready to lock them all up for sexual battery Jake? Or are you just a big fat hypocrite?
Lets see, abortion involves killing people whose humanity has been denied, just like the holocaust. Rape is forcing sexual activity against ones will, while an ultrasound, trans vaginal or otherwise, is a simple diagnostic tool they may have used anyway in the context of an elective procedure. Which set of comparisons is really more valid?
Oh about making women watch an inconvenient truth or anything else at their first prenatal care appointment. In Planned Parenthood vs. Casey the Supreme Court said something to the effect of (I can’t remember the exact wording) that it is fine for the state to favor childbirth over abortion. And also that the state did have some interest in protecting fetal life. So I think that placing requirements on abortion but not childbirth is consistent with this.
“Because Jill already pointed out on this site that there are a number of abortion clinics already mandating that patients MUST have a vaginal ultrasound before their abortion.”
One last time.
If my doctor says I need a TVU, I will assume it’s for a medically-indicated reason, unless I have reason to question his/her judgment. But this mandated ultrasound legislation? Its authors didn’t even TRY to justify it by making reference to medicine or public health. There is not one single line in that bill that purports to advance the health of women seeking abortions.
And since you said yourself that many clinics already perform TVU’s on patients in the first trimester, then there really is no point to this bill. But I’m sure its sponsors are getting a kick out of usurping the role of physicians in deciding what instruments should be inserted into women’s bodies. It must have been so very titillating to draft that bill–like soft-core porn for the State House. Like I always said, pro-life men are DA BEST!!
“Oh about making women watch an inconvenient truth or anything else at their first prenatal care appointment.”
Once again, deliberately missing the point. Bravo–you must have passed Mendaciousness 101 at whatever unaccredited Bob Jones University you attended.
Doonesbury humor always seems boring and flat to me. I know he is going for the dry sarcastic type of stuff, but *yawn*. And a tad offensive. Rape and abortion, ha, how hilarious…
Isn’t that special…. Trudeau, the medical expert has decreed that it is better for women if the abortionist is jabbing in the dark, without benefit of a sonogram to locate the embryo or fetus.
The low quality of medical judgment on the left is why legalizing abortion hasn’t made it safer, and why we’re living under the impending spectre of obamacare.
I’ve got a nice photo (click HERE) with an Operation Rescue video, showing that even with the latest and greatest planned unparenthood clinics, the botched abortion victims still get pushed out into the back alley for their ambulance ride.
Personally I don’t give a damn what women do to themselves. I am long past the point of trying to explain to stupid, unteachable people how abortion is bad news for women. I can only talk to a brick wall for so long before I realize I’m not getting anywhere. I am concerned only with protecting innocent people from extermination. Go ahead and destroy your bodies. I don’t care. Just don’t hurt anyone else.
The sad thing is, and correct me if I’m wrong…but the ultrasound cost for a person with insurance will be covered by standard baby wellness checkups.
“The sad thing is, and correct me if I’m wrong…but the ultrasound cost for a person with insurance will be covered by standard baby wellness checkups.”
I don’t know if you are wrong, but if that’s correct it’s damn depressing. :/
On the pro-choice side of the river, we don’t respond to getting manipulated, or yelled, or hit by our partners by fiercely trying to regulate what happens inside other women’s bodies.
Right. You respond in kind by taking out your anger on those who can’t fight back. Heroic.
Don’t hate on me, Megan, because I didn’t respond to getting manipulated, and yelled at, and hit by my ex by killing our innocent children.
LOL-those smart enough to see ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ for what it is are smart enough not to abort. Don’t like TVUS? Don’t have an abortion. DUH.
Go, Praxedes!
‘Don’t force your morality on me while I force my beliefs onto my unborn child to the point of death.’ Gotta love their double standard. Shriek! You wingnuts and your death penalty-you’re so violent-don’t tell me I have to look at this thing at 7 months gestation on ultrasound before i KILL IT.’
Typically liberal. It’s okay for the government to mandate that religious organizations provide contraception against their beliefs but not okay that the government mandate TV ultrasounds. What do you expect? This is what is SO mind boggling about the liberal though process. IF YOU GIVE GOVERNMENT THE POWER TO MANDATE ONE THING YOU GIVE THEM THE POWER TO MANDATE OTHER THINGS. How hard a concept is this to grasp?
Of course, silly me, it’s okay for government to do what liberals want – just not conservatives.
YOU should be ashamed at your pathetic attempts to regain control of your own life.
I have tried three or four times to formulate a response to how angry reading the above sentence made me. The idea that anyone could say this–directly to a survivor no less–and call themselves pro-woman in the same paragraph is literally outrageous. That is a level of disgusting that I honestly didn’t expect from you, Megan. But at this point, I feel the need to say this “out loud,” so to speak: you disgust me. Completely and totally. So you’re angry, and you’re passionate, and you’ve got things to say. Maybe you’ve even got your own history, I don’t know. None of that could possibly be construed to give you the right to ever say anything like that to people who have suffered.
Kristen – but on the flip side, doesn’t your whole argument rest on the premise that right wingers accept the mandate?
‘It was never about women’s health’-you got that one right at least Megan-abortion has never been about women’s health. All about the $ and feminist supremacy and nothing else.
“If my doctor says I need a TVU, I will assume it’s for a medically-indicated reason”
Well, there ya go. Problem solved. Because when women go in to get an abortion, they will be told by the medical staff that they need to have an ultrasound. Assume away Megan.
The same 83% of abortion clinics that required an ultrasound before it was mandated by legislation will continue to require ultrasounds now. They presumably required those ultrasounds for medically-indicated reasons. But now that they are mandated by legislation, those medically-indicated reasons must have vanished and they will only be doing ultrasounds because it’s the law. *eyeroll*
“YOU should be ashamed at your pathetic attempts to regain control of your own life.”
Wow. I must have missed that reading through the thread. Low blow, Megan. I also didn’t expect something like that from you.
Does anybody know – is the bill that was passed in Texas – was it 82(R) HB 15? Is that the final text?
Kristen – but on the flip side, doesn’t your whole argument rest on the premise that right wingers accept the mandate?
If you want to see it that way, then yes. But then the argument also rests on the premise that liberals accept the TV ultrasound mandate – which I don’t see happening, especially in this cartoon.
Kristen – what’s interesting is it doesn’t sound like the ultrasound component is the headache, as that was typically part of the process – the issue is the doctor having to do it, and the 24 hour waiting period.
Regardless, I think both of our points are correct.
No, I won’t apologize for my comments. I stand by them, and if that makes me an intolerable jerk, so be it.
I have met many, many people who have suffered and don’t use this suffering as an excuse to foist their narrow-minded ideology on other people. Surviving abuse doesn’t give anybody a right to control what happens inside women’s bodies, or to shame women who don’t live according to the dictates of Judeo-Christian ideology.
Trudeau’s logic just completely escapes me. Never mind the fact that he’s married to Jane Pauley. That’s a topic for a whole other day. How he can be so callous over this whole thing is just completely mind-numbing. After all, he and Jane have had 3 children together. Plus, I know that Jane had a miscarriage a number of years ago, so that had to have personally affected both of them. Having said all that, how he can go about with this kind of screed after having raised 3 kids makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I guess he figures that his celebrity status grants him an unchecked pass and that whatever criticism is leveled against him is completely unwarranted.
Well, Mr. Trudeau, many of us have spoken. You owe it to yourself and your readers to issue an apology.
Being abused ALSO doesn’t give anybody a right to take it out on their child. It doesn’t give anyone the right to use their body to destroy the body of an innocent third party. It doesn’t give anyone the right to throw basic human decency out the window and claim it doesn’t apply because it’s “Judeo-Christian ideology” or “narrow-minded ideology”.
The ‘shaming wand’ is no larger than the canula used in a suction aspiration abortion.
It is the same ‘shaming wand’ that the abortionist uses to verify the age of the pre-natal child before she/he begins the procedure and is sometimes used to assist the abortionist in the search and destroy part of the procedure.
Unfortunately an abortionsit cannot be reilied upon to excercise the same responsible professionalism that other physician do in nearly every other invasive surgical procedure.
Then there is the matter of who is responsilbe for paying the bill in somre if not most of the abortion procedures.
When the government is responsible for licensining and regulating the practice of medicine and then the government is further involved by being required to fund the procedure then it is not unreasonable for the government to make additonal demands on the abortionists and the patient.
If you don/t want the governement invovled in your uterus, then don’t involve the government in what goes on in your uterus.
Quit playing the poor helpless woman.
Pull yourself up by your own bra straps and be responsible for your own body.
I have met many, many people who have suffered and don’t use this suffering as an excuse to foist their narrow-minded ideology on other people.
Do all prolifers use suffering as an excuse to oppose abortion or is it just me? For some reason, I really strike a nerve with you, Megan. You seem to understand the dynamics of abuse very well. Maybe you can relate to what I have lived through? If so, I am very, very sorry.
No one deserves to be abused and no one deserves death in their mom’s womb in the name of choice.
BTW, I was prolife from the time I saw pictures of aborted children when I was but a child myself, it is not any suffering on my part that made me recognize the humanity in the unborn child.
It was only after I suffered abuse, though, that I became outspoken about the rights of the unborn. I wasn’t strong enough to speak out for the underdog until I was one myself.
There is a reason you keep coming back here, Megan.
Imagine the glee of feminists if there were some proviso attached to the TVUS mandate requiring taxpayers to pay for the ensuing abortion as long as the woman agreed to the ultrasound. Funny picture, imagining the 360 they’d do and how’d they’d be drooling for it to be mandated immediately. All references to ‘rape’ would magically disappear.
Pull yourself up by your own bra straps and be responsible for your own body.
LOL. Yeah, what he said. Woman-up.
Trudeau owes an apology to all rape victims. What a disgusting creep. I’m sure he really cares about “women’s rights”. It’s more likely that he wants to keep abortion legal so that he can use women and get rid of the “consequences”.
Megan,
Please keep posting here. Your comments provide a beautiful example of the utter lack of compassion or logic seen in so many pro-aborts. Plus, it’s amusing to watch you make a complete and utter ass out of yourself.
Major LOL on the Bob Jones accredited university line. Not the my educational history is of any relevance but I currently attend the University of Toronto, which is on most lists the best or second best university in Canada. I didn’t even know who Bob Jones was until I googled the name. But anyway, you’re clearly in full on ad hominem mode there so it is going to be difficult to argue any further. I’d be glad to continue if you have any further actual arguments.
“If I ever catch that little bastard I’ll tear his lungs out,”
-Hunter S Thompson on Gary Trudeu
Page 165 of
Garry Trudeau: Doonesbury and the aesthetics of satire
50 years from now it will appear next to derewige jude, and the slave ship brooks in history books.
And people will still be reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. ;-)
I love Hunter S.
This is not surprising at all coming from those on the left. No standards, no morality, no apologizing for mean-spirited remarks, no class. Can’t remember where this was, but I think there was even a radical feminist professor that was quoted as saying men are rapists even for having consentual sex. These people are nutcases.
Doe – Nice job painting a viewpoint on a large chunk of people based on a cartoonist, and some feminist professor that you think might exist somewhere and that you think might have said something.
Great logic!
@Doe: I believe the name you’re looking for is Andrea Dworkin. *googles* Yup, that’s the one. To be fair, she’s pretty far out on the fringes. Though there are people out there with her.
“The same 83% of abortion clinics that required an ultrasound before it was mandated by legislation will continue to require ultrasounds now.”
So back to the matter at hand: you yourself just proved that this mandate is a frivolous piece of legislation. It’s an utter, complete waste of time, and only exists for one reason: so representative jo schmo can giggle with his cronies about figuratively, and literally, screwing the baaad, naughty, abortion-seeking women of Virginia.
Like I said, pro-life men are just the sweetest!
I should know better than to get back into this argument, but I have to say this. Megan, what about the 17% that don’t? If its good medical practice, they should have been doing it as well. I hardly think bringing the 17% up to a normal standard of care is frivolous legislation.
Well the problem here is that your pro-life delusions are becoming fact in your mind.. The authors of this legislation didn’t furnish statistics about the number of clinics in Virginia that provide TVUs to patients in the first trimester, so this “17%” is utterly meaningless.
But say that a number of clinics in the state weren’t acting in accordance with conventional medical wisdom. The fact that they might start doing so, after the passage of this bill, is entirely incidental to the legislation at hand, because the bill was never intended to improve standards of medical care. The word “health” doesn’t appear anywhere in the document.
And finally, its really curious that after public pressure, the TVU mandate was dropped. If it really were so important to the health of Virginia women that every first trimester patient get this specific procedure, lawmakers wouldn’t have taken a step back.
“The same 83% of abortion clinics that required an ultrasound before it was mandated by legislation will continue to require ultrasounds now.”
So back to the matter at hand: you yourself just proved that this mandate is a frivolous piece of legislation.
Awesome! Thanks for the self-refuting statement! If 83%!!! of NAF providers (only! What about the ones that AREN’T NAF certified?!) are doing the TVUS because it is medically necessary, the fact that not all providers ARE means this law is required, no “rape”, “screwing”, etc.
I find it odd that you’re railing so violently against this law when it’s obviously needed. Did you get to see your baby on ultrasound before you had him/her killed? Did it make a difference? Do you think it would have?
I think it’s important that ALL women receive the best medical care possible, even when they are seeking an abortion. It cannot be denied that women’s lives have been lost due to *legal* abortion. Based on the information I have found, it is my opinion that ultrasound legislation will improve the safety of abortions for women.
Let me be clear, since I don’t think I’ve mentioned this is all the posts I’ve written on this topic. I do not think ultrasound laws are written to make abortions safer for women, that’s just a beneficial result of them. I think they are written because of the mountain of anecdotal evidence that women are lied to when seeking abortions and they are not fully informed when making the decision. I do believe these laws help improve the informed consent process for women, which I hope results in fewer abortions.
I’m not going to get upset about a law that seeks to mandate what is already the standard of care, because it will
1) make abortions safer
2) ensure informed consent
3) possibly result in fewer abortions
Looks like a win-win to me. And I think only those that have a vested interest in keeping women ill-informed and keeping abortion numbers up would fight against such legislation.
Still looking for the text of the bill, and if anybody knows anything about the payment of these services.
I wonder because, if people are freaking out about having to indirectly pay for contraception use, how are they not freaking out about having to pay for an abortion doctor to do a sonogram? How would one be a violation of one’s 1st amendement rights, but not the other?
“If it really were so important to the health of Virginia women that every first trimester patient get this specific procedure, lawmakers wouldn’t have taken a step back.”
In addition to that, it’s also safe to assume that there would be more than just a tiny handful of (Republican-controlled) states with mandatory ultrasound laws on the books in the first place. If anything, Virginia, contemplating such legislation in 2012, would be a holdout, one of the few remaining states without mandatory ultrasound requirements, not one of the few states considering it.
Cue incoming paranoid, nonsensical rants about how the legislatures in the 40+ other states are controlled by the “abortion industry” and that’s why they don’t have ultrasound laws.
No paranoid rants needed joan. One would expect given the controversy surrounding the abortion issue that there would be a lot of hesitation to legislate around it. I would argue the real paranoia is from people who think there is some sort of war on women.
actually many abortion providers perform ultrasounds anyway – to verify that the baby is in the uterus and not the fallopian tubes. The key is that the abortion-providers don’t show the screen to the woman. So there is no real difference here, unless the abortions were performed before, without a prior ultrasound.
And many of those ultrasounds a done via the belly, instead of the vagina. This is a red herring, and too bad Doonesbury took the side of the anti-baby crowd in this. Such a sad commentary on what we consider rights.
Why do we not consider the death of the baby and the trauma and possible future health problems of the woman to be important? But the always-and-for-practically-any reason to support abortion is sacrosanct? We have things backwards and turned turned up-side-down…
Let’s review: TVUS? unnecessary medical care. Birth control for middle aged ‘co-eds’-pay up!
To be fair MPQ, I don’t think 30 is quite middle aged.
30 is certainly old enough to take responsibility for your fertility, JDC. Unless you’re a feminist, of course.
I agree, I just didn’t like the idea that I will be middle aged in only 10 years :).
Gotcha. Me neither, :)
“30 is certainly old enough to take responsibility for your fertility, JDC. Unless you’re a feminist, of course.”
So explain again to me what that means, exactly. Does it mean paying out of pocket for services that pretty much the rest of the Western world considers to be very, very basic preventive health care for women? Does it mean whining about insurance coverage for birth control but curiously ignoring the fact that plenty of childless men and women who carry insurance policies are paying for other people to have babies?
That’s some logic. But anybody who supports the “men’s rights” movement–and all its reactionary, anti-woman BS–should be written off as a crackpot anyway. Did you cheer when Anders Breivik shot up that island full of 15-year-olds? Really stuck it to the “feminized” West, eh?
Can’t speak for anyone else but personally, I actual think insurance coverage for birth control is a good thing, it just shouldn’t be mandated by the government. But the second part of the comment, regarding Anders Brevik, is absurd beyond belief. I’m sure no one here endorses what he did, or shooting people in general. But oh wait, anyone who disagrees with you must be as crazy as he is. Sure.
I agree with you, JDC. I think it would be good if it were covered but the mandate sucks.
Megan, how are the MRAs connected to the Norway shootings? I haven’t heard that one.
Hey Jack. Nice to be agreed with. :) I have to say I’m not even a conservative by American standards, in fact I don’t even have any right wing views really other than on abortion. I have no moral objection to birth control, support same sex marriage etc. Not sure why I felt the need to reveal all that just now except that I guess I find Megan is trying to portray all opponents of abortion as far right nutcases.
I suppose if the “rest of the Western world” were jumping off a bridge, you would too? The “rest of the Western world” is not America. It does not have things like OUR Constitution and OUR Bill of Rights. If you don’t like those things, you are welcome to move. But stop trying to make the rest of our nation conform to you.
Jack and JDC-
Awesomesauce.
I’m sure if a conservative invoked the values of the western world as a reason for anything, it would be seen as racist.
You’re so right, Megan. You just sit back like the wilting flower you are and let the grownups take care of everything, cuz you’re so ‘fierce’ and ’empowered’, you poor little third world victim. I’m sure somewhere in Africa some mother watching her kids starve is deeply grateful not to be facing the horrible war on women that brave little soldiers like you are. Keep whining-you’re a walking example of how abortion does NOT empower women-you got your legal abortion and all you can do is bitch.
JDC,
Or ‘misogynist’. Misandry, on the other hand, is encouraged-because feminism is all about ‘equal’ rights. Unless you’re a man, a prolife woman, or an unborn child.
“You just sit back like the wilting flower you are and let the grownups take care of everything, cuz you’re so ‘fierce’ and ‘empowered’, you poor little third world victim.”
Right, because wanting my insurance–that I pay a great deal for, mind you–to cover birth control makes me a “whiner.” Opposing legislation that’s only designed to humiliate women and make if difficult for them to access a safe, legal procedure is mere “whining.” Right. I think our already-great country can do better for women, and I’m “whining.” Ha.
But since I’m such a child, I’ll do the childish thing and turn your own rhetoric back on you. What does advocating against abortion do to help that poor starving kid in Africa?
1.) I fail to see how getting an ultrasound before a “safe, legal procedure” is or would be humiliating. I don’t feel humiliated when the dentist takes an x-ray of my teeth before working on them, either. You guys have this really funny double standard going on, where you want to try and say that abortion is just like any other “procedure”, but freak out when pre-op diagnostics are suggested and start talking about things like “shame” and “humiliation” when those things would never be applied to any other “safe, legal procedure”.
2.) I think our already-great country can do better for EVERYONE than turning a blind eye to mommy having them killed as long as they’re young enough.
3.) This is where pro-choice/pro-life diverges drastically. We’d say, “Hey, we should work to get that kid some food!”, they’d say, “Wow. That kid’s mom should’ve killed them a long time ago so they wouldn’t be suffering through this.”
“Not sure why I felt the need to reveal all that just now except that I guess I find Megan is trying to portray all opponents of abortion as far right nutcases.”
Nah. Moronic, who aligns herself with the “men’s rights movement” (see most recent post), effects that image all by herself. MRAs are a real delightful bunch whose favorite activities include: railing against women’s achievements in the workplace, complaining that rape statistics are inflated and that domestic violence shelters are just hubs of liberal-feminist indoctrination, and condemning immigration as an attack on Western society.
Whatever legitimate critiques men’s rights activists might have gets lost in their vitriolic rhetoric. For a more domestic example of their extremism, google “Thomas Ball.” Even the Southern Poverty Law Center has caught onto their hateful ways.
And this is what MoronicProChoiceQuotes, by borrowing material from prominent MRAs, tacitly supports.
“This is where pro-choice/pro-life diverges drastically. We’d say, “Hey, we should work to get that kid some food!”, they’d say, “Wow. That kid’s mom should’ve killed them a long time ago so they wouldn’t be suffering through this.””
No kidding. Most of the pro-choicers I know are genuinely caring people, but they have this weird dissonance when talking about abused and suffering children. This one lady told me that she was really sorry about my abusive childhood and she thinks that abortion would have been more humane. I was like “lolwut? So, one scenario I am dead, the other I had a rough life but still HAVE a life. So killing me would have been compassionate? Does not compute.”
Megan, How much do the boy-men (or child-men if any of them are black) that hump you contribute towards your birth control? Do you expect us to pick up the tab for dinner, drinks and a movie, too?
Whine, whine, whine. ”I want you to pay for my birth control and then when it fails I want you to pay to have my child killed!” You are a huge whiner. Maybe you’ve never been abused but maybe you were given everything you whined for while growing up. Which is abusive in it’s own way.
You humiliate women by allowing boy-men to use you and by not holding them accountable. Big feminist you.
I’ll pay for your bc when you pay for me to have a wedding anniversary party every year for my family and friends.
Megan, I guess that since that point was between you and mpq, there was little reason for my self to say anything. I agree that the nuts seemed to have drowned out whatever legitimate concerns there are with men’s rights, and I say this as a man.
MRAs are a disgrace to men, imnsho.
What women’s achievements in the workplace would those be, Megan, besides whining for special priveleges simply because they’re women? I don’t support MRAs tacitly, I support them openly. EQUAL rights don’t cancel out other rights. And no, we don’t feel obliged to pay for your self objectification and random sexual encounters. We already have kids to feed and take care of, kids we didn’t bail on by exterminating them. GROW UP.
BTW, glad to see you’re paying attention re: my blog, Megan. Perhaps you should re-read that last post, you might learn something.
Praxedes: AMEN.
MRAs don’t support equal rights, really. Their stuff is pretty gross. They write things like most women secretly enjoy being raped and that men should get custody in divorce by default. The legitimate complaints can’t be heard through the crazy. They are the male answer to the rad fems who think that hetero sex is rape and that all men want to subjugate women. Equality is not to be found in either of those camps. :/
Exactly Jack. The far right and far left are both equally insane. We must fight for the equality of everyone male, female, born, unborn, black, white etc. No hate should ever be tolerated.
I agree that MRAs are a disgrace, but only to themselves. Men are no more a monolith than women are, so it isn’t fair to let the wacky ones stand for all of them.
…Though it is awfully generous of the MRAs to try and share their embarrassment, since they have so much of it. ;)
“Megan, How much do the boy-men (or child-men if any of them are black) that hump you contribute towards your birth control? Do you expect us to pick up the tab for dinner, drinks and a movie, too?”
I hope you do realize that you’re part of a small minority of retrogrades in the post-industrial West who continue to believe that birth control isn’t a very basic part of preventive healthcare. Or that women who use birth control are promiscuous teenagers.
But if you have to know: my partner of 6 years and I both have private
insurance through our jobs, and we contribute equally to the cost of birth control. Yes, that’s right–I pay monthly premiums and yearly deductibles for the cost of a service that’s essentially taken out of my paycheck already. But maybe you think my private insurance company should have some kind of vice squad to make sure that all those birth control users are married and aren’t trying to prevent conception.
Jack,
I haven’t seen anything from MRAs supporting rape or violence. The ones I highlight are simply men pushing back against the stupidity and supremacist doctrine of radical victim feminism, same as millions of women like me are-we reject it. Encouraging violence against anyone has no place in any movement purporting to support equal rights-on that we totally agree. If you’re talking about MRAs who point out false rape and DV claims used by feminists simply to destroy someone or get their way on something, that’s totally different.
Megan-
If you’re dumb enough to pay high insurance premiums for something that’s 9 bucks a month at WalMart without insurance, that’s your problem.
Clearly you STILL don’t understand how insurance works, Moron. Also, you don’t seem to get that if you–some random person on the internet–gets to decide what constitutes “legitimate medical care,” then anybody can have a say in what gets covered.
Take your kids to a crisis pregnancy center for their vaccines and wellness checks. I’m ideologically opposed to supporting the offspring of a raving, anti-feminist nut with MY health insurance. GROW UP!
I’m ideologically opposed to supporting the offspring of a raving, anti-feminist nut with MY health insurance.
But you’re okay with paying to kill people’s offspring. Less of them so more left for YOU.
Meggie’s mantra is “MINE, MINE, MINE, ME, ME, ME, WHINE, WHINE, WHINE. YOU SHOULD KILL YOURS BECAUSE I KILLED MINE.”
It is both heartbreaking and mind-numbing that there are people who want to justify the sin of child murder aka abortion. It is also a sad commentary that history has such a vicious means of repeating itself. Societies, countries, and cultures that have done such things have eventually faced their own extinction – including ancient Israel. Here’s an article from Wikipedia that cites examples. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sacrifice
Praxedes-
Yep. Again, Megan, I’ll start paying for your birth control when you start paying for my ammunition. If you’re so unconcerned about taxpayer funded bc and abortion, why do you continue to whine for it here? Take it up with your insurance company, not us. We have kids to feed-alive and well because they had the same right to life we ALL do. And yeah I’d take my kids to the local public health center for vaccinations, but Obama cut the funding in order to pay for the abortions of detainees. Elective abortions that aren’t legitimate medical care-like yours wasn’t.
Oh and that’s MRS random TAXPAYING person on the internet to you, moonbat. Don’t bite the hand that feeds your entitlements.
But if you have to know: my partner of 6 years
Why the need to explain to me that you have had the same partner for six years?
It’s clear you think you’re better than women who have multiple partners.
Oh, deliberately missing the point as always, Praxedes. Tell me how it’s logical to oppose insurance coverage for birth control, yet demand that happily childless insurance carriers should have to pay for other people to have children. Your kind has certainly opened up a can of worms by allowing a very vocal minority to determine what kind of healthcare is “legitimate.”
And for the record, I do support my insurance covering the entire spectrum of reproductive health services. I’m not in the business of rationing care for people because I don’t approve of their lifestyle.
Yeah, actually you are Megan-its called Obamacare and its currently bankrupting the country.
I hope you guys at least went dutch on the scrape-out.
Dostoevsky once said, “If there is no God, everything is permitted.” Given the rank selfishness of some of the posters on here and their aggressive demands that we’re supposed to pay for their right to either prevent the conception of unborn children up to the outright premeditated murder of them proves his point.
Yikes – the adults wander away for a while, and look what you folks have done to the place. Behavior fitting of a bunch of 10 year olds!
Contraception – cover with insurance. It makes fiscal sense for an insurance plan, darn near everyone uses it, but we shouldn’t have people not using it (to delay pregnancy or otherwise) because of finances.
Abortion – shouldn’t be covered with insurance. Plain and simple. I’m still shocked the GOP had it in their health care plan up until just a couple of years ago.
“And yeah I’d take my kids to the local public health center for vaccinations, but Obama cut the funding in order to pay for the abortions of detainees.”
Oops, wrong. That would be the GOP and their suicidal drive to balance the budget by slashing social safety nets. And funny, now the problem is detainees getting abortions, when yesterday it was illegal immigrants dropping “anchor babies” all across the country.
“Oh and that’s MRS random TAXPAYING person on the internet to you, moonbat. Don’t bite the hand that feeds your entitlements.”
Honey, we both work. But unfortunately I don’t get to claim tax benefits for spawning, and I still have to pay for other people to have children via my private insurance. Moonbattery, indeed.
rezlimey, that’s nor fair. There are atheists such as myself who are prolife.
Ex-GOP, you may be right. The behavior on this board hasn’t been very good, and I’m sure I’m at least in part to blame. I guess its difficult to be civil on issues we have strong disagreements on.
I think that Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology is quite unorthodox (to say the least). Having said that, I found a quote of his that is worthy of using for the sake of argument. “Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.”
You would if you’d put on the big girl pants instead of scraping it out. Honey. Just another dead Sunday around your extra quiet house, eh., Megs? I’m off to spend time with my pregnancy tissue-keep whining, victim, show the world how empowered you ain’t.
Wow. Paying to have your child killed, then whining that you don’t have a child to claim tax benefits…New low? I think we might have a new low.
JDC, sorry if my speaking in generalities offended you. I know you’re not the only “atheist” who is pro-life. So is Nat Hentoff. Nevertheless, I did say something about the selfishness of some of the posters (they know who they are) and how it was proving Dostoevsky’s point, so I wasn’t referring to you specifically.
Yikes – the adults wander away for a while, and look what you folks have done to the place. Behavior fitting of a bunch of 10 year olds!
Come on now. Who are you to judge my or anyone else’s behavior? (:
“I’m off to spend time with my pregnancy tissue-keep whining, victim, show the world how empowered you ain’t.”
Yep, go ahead and raise up that son of yours to be the kind of stellar pro-life guy we can except from the anti-feminist set: the kind of bro who shows up hungover to his crappy business classes after a Sunday night spent grey-raping a drunk freshman because her skirt was too short. But he’ll be all for “fiscal responsibility,” so you can beam with pride.
And I’m enjoying my Sunday right now, thanks.
As opposed to that stand up guy of yours who won’t marry you or pay for your bc and abortions? Classy way to talk about a three year old, moonbat. Feminism caring for women at its finest. Thanks for being such a stellar example of why feminism is the most antiwoman doctrine ever. Love the old ‘all men are rapists’ canard too. LOL. See ya, loser.
“As opposed to that stand up guy of yours who won’t marry you or pay for your bc and abortions?”
Oops, wrong again, but I guess any guy who isn’t a Bible-thumping cretin foaming at the mouth about sluts just doesn’t size up. Oh well. Go spend time with your son. Maybe he can play with some models of aborted fetuses, and then maybe you can read him a bedtime story about the little victim feminist who cried rape.
Yep, go ahead and raise up that son of yours to be the kind of stellar pro-life guy we can except from the anti-feminist set: the kind of bro who shows up hungover to his crappy business classes after a Sunday night spent grey-raping a drunk freshman because her skirt was too short. But he’ll be all for “fiscal responsibility,” so you can beam with pride.
I think you are about three days from a total mental and emotional breakdown. If you are serious with the above statement, you need some help.
Thanks, rezlimey, no offence taken. Oh and MPQ and Megan, I love how you two are basically proving EX-GOP’s point with your last few points.
Megan,
I hope you realize you’re making a complete fool out of yourself.
Yep, go ahead and raise up that son of yours to be the kind of stellar pro-life guy we can except from the anti-feminist set
Nah, she should totally raise him up to be a pro-abort who supports abortion in order to be able to keep using women for sex without having to deal with the “consequences”. All in the name of “women’s rights” of course.
Oops, wrong again, but I guess any guy who isn’t a Bible-thumping cretin foaming at the mouth about sluts just doesn’t size up
Sluts? How pro-woman of you.
“Abortion – shouldn’t be covered with insurance. Plain and simple. I’m still shocked the GOP had it in their health care plan up until just a couple of years ago.”
Do you have a link to that? Not like I need another reason to dislike the GOP, but I would like to see it. ;)
”I haven’t seen anything from MRAs supporting rape or violence. The ones I highlight are simply men pushing back against the stupidity and supremacist doctrine of radical victim feminism, same as millions of women like me are-we reject it. Encouraging violence against anyone has no place in any movement purporting to support equal rights-on that we totally agree. If you’re talking about MRAs who point out false rape and DV claims used by feminists simply to destroy someone or get their way on something, that’s totally different.”
The MRAs I have read stuff from are usually either whining about having to pay child support or upset that they can’t hit their kids or wives without getting in trouble. I haven’t seen much that I can even start to agree with from them. Like the Thomas Ball guy who “only” slapped his four-year-old across the face and cut her lip, and was just shocked that he got arrested and lost custody to the mother. And then he set himself on fire. Apparently he is a big hero on that A Voice for Men blog. So, yeah, if they support men like that, I won’t have anything to do with them. And they use hugely inflated false rape statistics to try to buttress their claim that women are just out to use false rape claims to ruin people. I’m sorry, I just find them horrifying.
There are valid complaints about the way that feminism is expressed without that kind of rhetoric.
“Nah, she should totally raise him up to be a pro-abort who supports abortion in order to be able to keep using women for sex without having to deal with the “consequences”. All in the name of “women’s rights” of course.”
It’s funny that pro-lifers love to portray men as these drooling troglodytes who’ll use any opportunity to have “no-consequences” sex with women. Without abortion, you’d still have the drooling troglodytes, you know. And men who use women.
Above I should have said their last few posts, not points. Oh me and my typing.
Here you go Jack – up until 2009 (!) the GOP had an insurance plan that covered abortion.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29456.html
Oh dear, so they covered abortion from 1991 to 2009? That’s not hypocritical at all… ;)
You can’t make this stuff up Jack.
Just pathetic. How many GOP politicians spent that time arguing abortion should be illegal? I am speechless.
@Alice, thanks for the name. I knew I had heard Andrea Dworkin’s name some years ago. I guess she actually did not make the statement about rape, but it had been debated in feminist circles.
@Ex-GOP, no I wasn’t just thinking up someone that I thought might exist. And this large chunk of people that make up the left in this country dominate the media and many of our universities. When was the last time you heard a left-wing speaker being shouted down by a right-wing conservative? I did not write liberal in my previous post. I wrote those on the left.
Man. Megan is my hero. I have utmost respect for someone who speaks the truth and let’s the right wing “nuts” know what is up. Bravo Megan!!!!
Ex-GOP, I can understand why you came up with that username. As for me, I can’t support the Democratic party because I don’t agree with any of their policies. At the same time, I know that they’re pretty much going to uphold them. I can’t say the same for vast multitudes of compromisers in the GOP. Granted, I am very much conservative. Yet, after having become disappointed and totally disillusioned with their wholesale abandonment of the principles they claim to espouse, I find it increasingly difficult to believe anything that comes out of the mouths of the Republican party. I just wish that the Constitution Party had a much greater prophetic voice that would resonate with the people.
I’m pretty sure that if the Founding Fathers were alive today, they wouldn’t recognize America as the country they founded – especially with regards to the millions of unborn children who have been murdered over the past few decades. I think it’s only a matter of time before the house of cards gets knocked down.
xalisae says: March 18, 2012 at 8:09 pm
“Wow. Paying to have your child killed, then whining that you don’t have a child to claim tax benefits…New low? I think we might have a new low.”
=========================================================
X,
Reminds me of the Menendez brothers who, after being convicted of murdering their parents with a shotgun, plead for mercy from the sentencing judge because they are ORPHANS.
It so nice to see that legalized abortion hasn’t divided women in the least.
Yeah, we sure are equal to men now.
Roar.
Megan says: March 18, 2012 at 8:18 pm
“Yep, go ahead and raise up that son of yours to be the kind of stellar pro-life guy we can except from the anti-feminist set: the kind of bro who shows up hungover to his crappy business classes after a Sunday night spent grey-raping a drunk freshman because her skirt was too short.”
===========================================================
I had to google the term.
“gray rape” -“sex that falls somewhere between consent and denial and is even more confusing than date rape because often both parties are unsure of who wanted what [when, how and with whom].” [It could apply to an elective abortion procedure.]
For a minute there I thought it might be unsolicited sex with a marine mammal.
Not that there is anything wrong with that. [Whatever butters your biscuit, babe.]
I am sure missy Phluck will soon be advocating for federal funding for that disadvantaged subset of our post modern society.
It would be unfair to discriminate against folks just because they have a blubber fetish. [Rosie O’donnell comes to mind.]
I can’t tell if you are guilty of stereotyping male freshmen or just jealous because the boys found one of your classmates more attractive than you.
Seriously, “both parties are unsure of who wanted what”!?!?!?
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/gray-rape-a-new-form-of-date-rape/
“Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both,” by Laura Sessions Stepp a Washington Post Journalist. [scentillating reading I am sure.] about how smart, ambitious young women do emotional damage to themselves by getting physical with men they are not dating or may have met for the first time…[we’re coming within smelling distance of the ‘woman want of chastity’ territory.]
Conservative men think women are private property.
Liberal men think women are public property.
Radical Feminists only think their women are property.
Right wing men are saying, “you have the right to fulfill your God given role as a woman….. by having sex with me”
Left wing males are whining, “you have the right to “empower” yourself as a woman and fulfill your natural purpose…by having sex with me.” [but now that I have ’empowered’ you, you alone are responsible for what happens to your body after I am done with it.]
Radical feministas are demanding equality with males, but they desire domination by a woman who looks and acts like a real man.
Ken, sometimes your diatribes are really, really creepy.
Took the words out of my mouth, Jack. Good to know I’m not the only one creeped out by that.
They seem creepy to you because they are neither fantasy nor fiction, but commentary on an ever present reality.
It is to your credit that you find them creepy.
It is an indication that you still have a moral compass whose needle points to sanity.
Good to know, I guess.
Ken’s a scorched-earth satirist. Such writing incurs risks and may offend many, but it has its place.
He also has a piece of Groucho Marx or Benjamin Franklin (Hawkeye) Pierce in him — or even Spongebob Squarepants.
Hope that helps. ;-)
Spongebob Squarepants… that explains it!
I had to look up grey-raping too, Ken.
Comparing ultrasounds to rape is creepy. Killing your child in the name of choice is creepy. Women being upset with other women who didn’t kill their children is creepy. Saying someone is prolife because they were abused is creepy.
Paying to have your child killed, then whining that you don’t have a child to claim tax benefits comes directly from someone living in Creepville.
Creepy is as creepy does.
Adding to the creepy is claiming that a typical prolife man is a rapist (or grey rapist, whatever). But the left are tolerant. We’re the angry and hateful freaks, right?
Yeah… JDC, that one is particularly upsetting to me.
“Adding to the creepy is claiming that a typical prolife man is a rapist (or grey rapist, whatever).”
What can I say, in this part of the country I’m surrounded by people who cling to their beliefs as hard as they do to their guns. They tend to blame all of their problems on changing gender norms, the Leftist media, and immigrants. Judging by MPQ’s blog, she’d fit in right here.
And finally, I think it’s really suspect for men OR women to be so concerned with human life that hasn’t even detached itself from a woman’s body yet.
FYI: it’s not liberal dudes who are typically attracted to frat houses (re: the “grey rape” comment. Just saying).
Thanks, Megan. You’re a peach.
So its really suspect for men or women to be concerned about human life that hasn’t met your arbitrary criteria yet? O.k., I feel like I should note that even the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade thought some interest began at viability. I guess they didn’t go far enough for you.
And true, pro-life men are automatically pigs. Good thing the pro-choice side has wonderful and respectful men like Alec Baldwin and Kanye! Lolol. ;)
I really try to avoid the name calling but, damn, I can only hear how I’m probably a horrible person so much in one day.
Pro-life men are automatically pigs?
My dad? My brother? Most of my guy friends? Gentlemen who I feel incredibly safe around? Megan, are you lumping them in with the sort of people you’re describing, people who, from how you describe it, can’t possibly be pro-life in the true sense of the word (as being pro-life entails reverence for humans, not only in matters of life and death, but also in matters of basic respect?)
Megan…why so much hate?
It can be tough Jack. On a related note I love how Megan and other extremists have become obsessed with birth as the starting point to have interest in a life. I mean, almost all countries have laws against completely elective abortions at some point before birth. i.e. France draws the line at 12 weeks, Sweden at 18, the Netherlands at 20 and so on. I guess all those countries are “really suspect”. Even in Canada, where there is no law, the Canadian Medical Association apparently advises against them after 20 weeks.
Well, duh JDC. Those countries obviously hate women and all their men are rapists. ;)
I’m not sure why the state of Texas makes it mandatory but it might be because a transvaginal ultrasound in the early stages of pregnancy, because of the small size of the uterus, provides a better image of the baby. I do believe a woman should be able to choose what type of ultrasound she receives.
Call me as many names as you see fit, Jack. I can take it.
And regard embryos and fetuses in all the humanity you’d like. The fact is they’re living in other people’s bodies, and in order to intervene on their behalf, you’re going to have to step on the rights of grown women. In order to safeguard the life of unborn children, you’ll most certainly be trampling on the liberties of the women forced to carry them for nine months. I have every right to say that this mentality is creepy.
Whatever Megan. I think its sad you see half the country as monolithic bad guys. It can’t be very good for you.
I have to say, as someone who lives in Canada, I have seen prochoice stupidity to the max. They argue like crazy against the idea of any law whatsoever, one of their arguments being that the Canadian Medical Association regulates abortion anyways. So, shouldn’t they at least be o.k. with a law that simply is those guidelines (or less strict)? I mean after all, they’re admitting its o.k. to restrict abortion at least at some point. Or should they pick a fight with the Canadian Medical Association for restricting “bodily autonomy” for half of a full term pregnancy? Their position is stupid either way.
And so the country is thus polarized. What good things have we heard here about pro-choice men? That they’re womanizing, selfish, immature, promiscuous, cowardly, “manginas,” the architects of the “culture of death.” So very nice.
Megan, when did Jack call you any names?
And I don’t think its right to paint all pro-choice men like that, either. I certainly don’t think Doug and Hal are horrible people. But sure, everyone can just further polarize and demonize everyone else. THAT will get the country somewhere.
Right on, Jack!! Its important to note that our side isn’t perfect either, and we could all do with less stereotyping and name calling.
A final thought about my points above. So, technically, these states passing “pain capable” acts banning abortion after 20 weeks are more liberal on abortion than Sweden. That i find funny. I’m off to bed, good night all!
What good things have we heard here about pro-choice men? That they’re womanizing, selfish, immature, promiscuous, cowardly, “manginas,” the architects of the “culture of death.” So very nice.
I just speak from personal experience.
And, since the fact is that gestating human beings are only living in other peoples’ bodies because those people happen to be their mothers, and that’s where they are SUPPOSED to be, because parents have an inherent obligation to their children, I’m afraid that I am one woman who will help Jack and JDC “step on” our rights, because no mother should have a right to end the life of her child. I will help “trample our liberties”, because there is no liberty that takes liberty from our children.
Jake wrote:
Man. Megan is my hero. I have utmost respect for someone who speaks the truth and let’s the right wing “nuts” know what is up. Bravo Megan!!!!
(*sigh*) Jake, you really haven’t improved very much from the “Regular Guy Blog” days, have you? Inflammatory rhetoric at record levels, substance/content vanishingly small. Megan is an angry, raging, post-abortive woman who seems to be unable to escape a temporary “calling” for trolling a pro-life website with substance-free flames and vitriol; your applause for Megan when she’s at her worst is telling. Perhaps you might save your applause for when she heals?
Paladin: See how irresistible the trolls can be? :-D
So you’re basically saying that Jake is Megan’s toady.
Good grief, yeah — that’s bad. LOL
SMH. Megan calls my three year old a rapist, but I’m the uncivil one? What a bunch of politically correct do-nothings you are. Tell ya what, keep on sugarcoating everything and patting yourselves on the back at how PC you all are-same as the narrative of the last 40 years, because of which we are now closer to recriminalizing abortion than ever before. Oh, wait, no we’re not. Calling yourself prolife won’t save any babies, you’ll have to get up off the couch to make that happen. But, hey. as long as the discourse doesn’t step on any toes, right? Goodbye.
xalisae: “there is no liberty that takes liberty from our children”
+1
“What good things have we heard here about pro-choice men?”
In the enumeration that follows, the writer entirely forgot “emasculated yes-dear toadies to perceived feminist power.”
LOL. I clicked ‘like’ by Jake’s comment because I thought for sure he was being sarcastic.
I guess it’s because I cannot comprehend how how any one can possibly like the nasty comments Megan makes.
If you reduce the scope of judgment for Megan’s remarks to smaller grammatical units, some are quite innocuous. I recall a participial phrase from a week ago, for example…
Paladin my friend!! Glad you remember me. I will say you did at one time help verify my existence on this blog and for that I am grateful. I stand by both posts though. I haven’t seen one argument showing why the force use of this ultrasound when no medical reason is specified is NOT sexual battery as defined above. Also, Megan has far more engery to debate the folks on this board and therefore is my hero.
Jake: “engery”
That’s more interesting as a homonym than as a typo…
If by “energy”, you mean “crushing guilt caused by the haunting spectre of her dead child, killed at her behest that she re-directs into anger and channels at the Pro-Lifers on this blog”, then you’d be correct.
Jake wrote:
Paladin my friend!!
(*wry smile*) Hm. A bit of artistic license, there, but… all right.
Glad you remember me.
You were and are many things, dear chap; “forgettable” isn’t exactly one of them.
I will say you did at one time help verify my existence on this blog and for that I am grateful.
De nada.
I stand by both posts though.
Colour me unsurprised. You’re not exactly one for accepting new data which conflicts with your personal narrative, friend.
I haven’t seen one argument showing why the force use of this ultrasound when no medical reason is specified is NOT sexual battery as defined above.
Pardon me, but: when exactly does any such law require that a woman be strapped down and involuntarily subjected to a TVU? If a woman doesn’t care to have a TVU (which is hardly a branding iron, by the way, nor is it a sex organ, nor is it done for the sexual pleasure of the attending medical professional, etc.) in such cases, she’s free to refuse one; she need only decline to have her child killed. Simple, yes?
Also, Megan has far more engery to debate the folks on this board and therefore is my hero.
She has energy, yes (which is a dubious honour–many pro-lifers on this board also have equal or superior energy, and I doubt you’d find them “heroic”; true?). She does not, however, usually “debate”; rather, she vents her spleen with invectives ranging from the insulting to the surreal, and rare is the exchange with her in which anything of substance (other than raw vitriol and screed) is communicated by her.
Case in point, dear fellow: “debate” requires a reasoned exchange of substantial ideas, rather than a mere screaming match, or a tantrum, or a raging bout of hysteria. Megan is a sick woman, and you’re not doing her any favours by enabling her illness with your applause.
I haven’t seen one argument showing why the force use of this ultrasound when no medical reason is specified is NOT sexual battery as defined above.
I guess rape survivors who have also had ultrasounds and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that THERE IS NO COMPARISON between the two and have made it clear how demeaning said comparison is not a good enough argument for such a progressive, enlightened proabort male as yourself.
Find me ONE rape survivor who will state that having an ultrasound by choice is the same as going through what she did while she was being raped. I will call any woman a liar to her face who is willing to state such an asinine thing. If she says the internal ultrasound she CHOOSES to have is like being raped, she has never been raped. And yes, women do lie about being raped.
Applauding Megan makes you just as sick as her.
Welcome to the Pro-Choice show! Hurt women lashing out in the diametrical direction they should be, and men standing around cheering them on while they implode.
Come inside,
the show’s about to start
Guaranteed
to blow your head apart
Rest assured
you’ll get your money’s worth
The greatest show
in Heaven, Hell or Earth
You’ve got to see the show,
it’s a dynamo
You’ve got to see the show,
it’s rock and roll, oh
Right before your eyes
see the laughter from the skies
And he laughs until he cries,
then he dies, then he dies
Please read the definition of sexual battery I posted. This meets the definition. Last I checked abortion is legal. Subjecting a woman to this unnecessary procedure when she is electing to have a legal procedure in my mind is nothing but sexual battery. A woman wants to have an abortion, and with this law now she must be sexually assaulted in order to get one. That is disgusting.
And as always Paladin pleasure reacquainting ourselves. You may not think of me as a friend but I enjoy conversing with you.
Ah, the pseudo-psychoanalysts here can rest-assured that I’ve always vehemently supported the full spectrum of reproductive rights, from a woman’s right to have a healthy pregnancy to preventing one or even stopping one from continuing. I’ve only become more resolute after my experiences. But yes, call me crazy if you’d like. Maybe I’ll stroll into one of your hallowed crisis pregnancy centers one of these days for some good ol’ healing-exorcisms. I’ll be sure to bring my scarlet letter.
Megan. You are the only sane person I see here.
Insane = disagrees with Megan. Brilliant critical thinking skills, there, Jake.
Its generally only sane people who accuse 3 year olds of being future rapists I guess.
“If a woman doesn’t care to have a TVU (which is hardly a branding iron, by the way, nor is it a sex organ, nor is it done for the sexual pleasure of the attending medical professional, etc.) in such cases, she’s free to refuse one; she need only decline to have her child killed. Simple, yes?”
So you’ll condemn the law when it grants women the right to end unwanted pregnancies, yet you’ll applaud it when it’s intended to degrade these abortion-seeking women. Alright. I’ll at least give you credit for telling it like it is: that this law sets a precedent for forcing abortion-minded women through a kind of gauntlet of humiliation rather than doing anything to improve their health or well-being.
By the way, the Attorney General recently announced revisions to the Uniform Crime Report’s definition of rape, so you can dispense with your antediluvian notions of what constitutes sexual assault. The new definition is as follows:
“The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
You can argue about the definition of consent and how it applies to preconditions for accessing a legal medical procedure, but at the very least it’s disturbing that lawmakers can pass a bill changing medical practice without ANY reference whatsoever to the health or wellbeing of the individual seeking care.
Jake says:
Subjecting a woman to this unnecessary procedure when she is electing to have a legal procedure in my mind is nothing but sexual battery.
And there we have it folks. Apparently 83% of NAF member clinics have been committing sexual battery for years.
I stand by my original comments regarding the nature of consent. Its not as though the law actually forces anyone to be penetrated when its a precondition for an entirely elective and unnecessary procedure. Say what you want about the purposes of the law, i really don;t care at this point. Frankly, it feels weird to be debating the regulation of a procedure that shouldn’t even be legal. If you disagree with the law, fine but its clearly not rape or sexual battery or anything like that.
I’ve only become more resolute after my experiences.
Right. Because your only other option is to admit that it was wrong of you to kill someone for your convenience. And Meggie is never wrong. Try to bring more young women into your sickness to make yourself feel better.
I’ll be sure to bring my scarlet letter.
Whine. Whine. Whine. Don’t you ever tire of playing the poor victim?
exorcisms?
Anything is worth a try, sweetums, because what you’re doing now ain’t becoming of ya. Except to your enabler Jake. He’s drooling over you fighting for your right to kill people. “Go, Meg, Go!” Great high-kick and pom-poms, Jake!
Sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities, JDC. I’ve seen good boys raised into angry, brutish men because of parents who cling to ancient notions of what it means to be a man or a woman in this world.
I’ve seen more than my fair share of “conservative” men (and women, to some extent) using their “conservatism” as a license to ride roughshod over the people around them.
Judging from her blog, I’m sure MPQ is raising her kid(s) to be righteous little freedom fighters who hate feminists and people who don’t conform to “traditional” gender roles. Here’s a lovely sample from one of her most recent posts:
“Reminder: Jezebel met her end lying in the street trampled by horses and eaten by dogs…”
Don’t like what I have to say? Sorry, if somebody wants to regulate what happens in other women’s bodies, they can’t act butthurt when somebody scrutinizes their personal affairs.
Jeez JDC, little hung up on the potential of your 3 year old huh. The point is raise him to disrespect women like you do, don’t be surprised when he takes his lessons to heart and does rape a women. He has been taught well.
xalisae,
Love it!
Welcome back my friends
To the show that never ends.
We’re so glad you could attend!
Come inside, come inside!
Jake, Megan, for reals. It ain’t funny, it ain’t cute, and it ain’t edgy to snicker about a three-year-old and judge him because you don’t like his mother. Wtf is wrong with you two? And JDC hasn’t said anything disrespectful towards women and you know it.
“Try to bring more young women into your sickness to make yourself feel better.”
Oh, we could go back and forth all day! I’m sure it’s very empowering for you to crusade against grown women to “liberate” their embryos and fetuses. What a noble, useful cause. Do you get a real sense of gratification thinking about the months of puking, mood changes, possible complications, torn vaginas, and irrevocable life changes that must happen in order for that little embryo to be eventually squeezed out into the world? I can’t imagine inflicting that kind of burden on somebody–a burden that surely outweighs any claims to existence that a human in its most incipient stages can make.
Vive la resistance.
“Sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities, JDC. I’ve seen good boys raised into angry, brutish men because of parents who cling to ancient notions of what it means to be a man or a woman in this world.”
And STFU for real. Kids aren’t automatically going to end up bad just because their parents teach them stupid crap. You don’t know that. If you don’t like MPCQ, then go after HER. Going after children makes you look like a bully.
“Jake, Megan, for reals. It ain’t funny, it ain’t cute, and it ain’t edgy to snicker about a three-year-old and judge him because you don’t like his mother.”
No Jack, I haven’t said anything about the child as the boy he is, only what his probably future is. FYI.
Sorry, if somebody wants to regulate what happens in other women’s bodies, they can’t act butthurt when somebody scrutinizes their personal affairs.
The point is raise him to disrespect women like you do, don’t be surprised when he takes his lessons to heart and does rape a women. He has been taught well.
These two yahoos are actually accusing prolife men of raping women (Megan actually calls rapes ‘personal affairs’) and prolife women of raising rapists. They need to post the names of these prolife guys that are raping women. I’m sure they have turned these prolife rapists into the police because they are so concerned about the safety of women. If they haven’t, they need to be held accountable for covering up for rapists.
“No Jack, I haven’t said anything about the child as the boy he is, only what his probably future is. FYI.”
Lol because talking about how he is going to be a horrible, terrible human being is not attacking the child. Gotcha.
I don’t know if calling him my three year old is supposed to be funny or you’re just confused, Jake but he’s MPQ’s. I’ve never met him don’t know his name and didn’t know of his existence before this thread.
Do you get a real sense of gratification thinking about the months of puking, mood changes, possible complications, torn vaginas, and irrevocable life changes that must happen in order for that little embryo to be eventually squeezed out into the world? I can’t imagine inflicting that kind of burden on somebody–a burden that surely outweighs any claims to existence that a human in its most incipient stages can make.
Right on the edge of the breakdown. . . . . .
Oh yes, Jake and Megan. The expert criminologists who can profile rapists better than the police can.
But Jack, going after children is what they do!
Going after children makes you look like a bully.
It doesn’t make them look like bullies, it makes them bullies. Bullies of children. Bullies of those children that made it out alive no thanks to them.
Oh, calling your opponent’s sanity into question isn’t, like, the oldest silencing mechanism in the book, is it? Very clever.
Oh, “make it out alive!” That’s really rich. Those embryos, they’re all just little POWs at the mercy of the evil women carrying them.
“Oh, calling your opponent’s sanity into question isn’t, like, the oldest silencing mechanism in the book, is it? Very clever.”
Like Jake just did earlier? Huh.
No, Jake was wrong. I can’t prove that anybody here is crazy, and I suspect most are completely, 100% lucid. Which is just more terrifying.
Well, at least you aren’t a hypocrite. Just a jerk.
“Criticize ideas, not people.”
I think we need to give ourselves a collective pat on the back for breaking this rule the most times of any thread on the website. I haven’t counted, but it must be true.
Lol, you must have missed some absolutely wonderful threads JDC. But IDGAF, you don’t condemn children and judge their futures based on parenting you think sucks. That’s total bs. And calling people rapists for holding an opposing viewpoint is just one of the most pathetic ad hominems I have ever seen.
In my defense, Jack I only have been hanging around this site for like a month. But yeah its pretty bad when I miss the days when people on the internet would just call each other Nazis. Theoretically their atrocities are worse than that of a racist, but the term had become so over used its lost all impact.
@xalisae: Your poem reminded me of “Welcome To The Show” by Saliva. You captured the exact same “Look at this craziness” spirit that’s in that song.
Your right JDC, my bad i was confused…so many entries i lost track. Point remains the same, raise children to hate women, don’t be surprised when they, you know, hate women. And Megan your right, I can’t prove anybody here is crazy either, but I have my suspicions.
So, where did JDC say anything hateful towards women? Go on, we’ll wait for you to copy paste it.
I’m pretty sure with prochoicers, saying anything against their position is “hateful words towards women”, I doubt he’ll find anything else.
Listen!
“Oh, calling your opponent’s sanity into question isn’t, like, the oldest silencing mechanism in the book, is it? Very clever.”
Like Jake just did earlier? Huh.
BTW, when did bring up people’s sanity?? i do believe it was you guys calling Megan insane, i was simply defending her.
Sexually assaulting women in order to shame them against abortion is hateful in my eyes.
Navi, a little late for that :).
“BTW, when did bring up people’s sanity?? i do believe it was you guys calling Megan insane, i was simply defending her. ”
Yeah, “you guys” is a lot easier than actually discerning the difference between different people’s stances and opinions, huh? I don’t think Megan is insane. I actually think she is a quite intelligent woman who I strongly disagree with. Apparently she thinks I am a rapist. So whatevs. Y’all have a really childish way of “debating”.
Jake, you defended Megan by putting everyone else down, I believe you said she was the only sane person here. What does that make the rest of us?
Ok jack. Not you okay?? Feel better. Point is many of you called her sanity into question. My post was a direct response to someone calling her sick. Would you like me to go back and gather the names of everyone who has or will a collective ” you all ” suffice? Let me know
Do you get a real sense of gratification thinking about the months of puking, mood changes, possible complications, torn vaginas, and irrevocable life changes that must happen in order for that little embryo to be eventually squeezed out into the world? I can’t imagine inflicting that kind of burden on somebody–a burden that surely outweighs any claims to existence that a human in its most incipient stages can make.
And if you would’ve let your child live, and “squeezed [him/her] out into the world”, you’d know how very, VERY, profoundly wrong you are. I know from experience. I feel sorry for you. You got so caught up in the “what if?”s, and overwhelmed by the (possible) changes, that you did something very cruel to your child and deprived yourself of something truly great. I’m sorry.
I can’t imagine inflicting that kind of burden on somebody–a burden that surely outweighs any claims to existence that a human in its most incipient stages can make.
Think about how insane the above comment is. Megan can’t imagine inflicting the burden of birth on someone yet she is alive and well. How the heck did she get here?
When you say insane things, don’t act surprised when people think you are.
Man, I go to the beach for the weekend with my rapist and products of conception for the weekend, and I miss all this?
Megan, a real question: WHY, exactly, so you keep coming here?
Jake: Everyone understands the point of pro-choicers calling it “rape”. Do you seriously think the purpose of drawing that association is mistaken by anyone here as a sincere belief on your part — unless, of course, you’re so far gone that you’ve lost the capacity to distinguish the utility of your propaganda from the truth value of its propositions?
One of the hazards of trafficking in mercenary uses of reason is that you come to believe untruths yourself. Thus does vice visit its own punishments on itself.
Jack: “Apparently she thinks I am a rapist.” And others here have said you’re having gay orgies all the time with your wife. Dude. You can’t win. ;-)
Nothing was inflicted on my mother, Praxedes, because everything from my conception to my birth was completely, 100% voluntary for her. It makes me sick to think that my mother might not have had a choice, had the Roe decision gone differently.
People should be brought into this world willingly, lovingly, and not by default because their mothers have no other option. Contrary to what you might think, I actually revere pregnancy and parenthood, which is why I think the pro-life position really cheapens that experience.
Megan: “No, Jake was wrong. I can’t prove that anybody here is crazy, and I suspect most are completely, 100% lucid. Which is just more terrifying.”
Why is zealously advocating for the helpless so terrifying? I think you’d claim that’s what pro-choicers are doing — advocating for helpless women against tyrannical control freaks. But pro-lifers are advocating for those who are slaughtered willfully by those very helpless women. Helpless women complicit in the slaughter of their helpless unborn children.
These are confused, sad, desperate women, Megan. What they do not need is to be further confused by coming to believe — against reason, sanity, and all virtue — that their own sense of helplessness is best resolved by the destruction of another helpless life.
Sacrificing a child on the altar of the self and then trying to warp life to wring joy out of that is an exercise in madness. Succeeding is worse — far worse.
Megan: “Contrary to what you might think, I actually revere pregnancy and parenthood, which is why I think the pro-life position really cheapens that experience.”
Huh? You mean, like “You’re alive today not because you deserve to be, having been conceived as a human possessing great worth. You’re alive, son, because in my beneficence and due to the legal wisdom of our vanguards, I chose to let you live. Yes. I am the mater familias, with the power of life and death in my merest whim. You are valuable because I decreed it. Now aren’t you glad, son, that I didn’t cheapen your value by imagining some lame-ass notion such as that you possesses intrinsic worth once you came into existence as a unique human in my womb? Aren’t you glad that I, and I alone, ascribed significance to your inchoate form? How does it feel to know that you exist not because an entire society deemed you valuable enough to protect, but because I and I alone opted to let you live? In fact, the rest of society argued, in support of my prerogative, that you’re akin to a parasite. So you should be thankful to me, inasmuch as I agreed with society in the case of your previous two almost-siblings.”
Is that kind of what you mean?
“You got so caught up in the “what if?”s, and overwhelmed by the (possible) changes, that you did something very cruel to your child and deprived yourself of something truly great.”
But X, you too are caught up in potentials. I’m sure everybody has the capacity to be a wonderful mother, father, friend, writer, musician, engineer. But laws can’t treat people as means to some kind of positive end; people’s futures can’t be decided by fiat. The fact that I might have deprived myself of “something truly great” should have no legal bearing.
Rasqual: yep, pretty spot-on.
Note: Above, I was referring to just one class of women who abort. There’s also a sizable cohort who just don’t give a damn at all — no helplessness, no desperation, nothing but souls buried in scar tissue. They also need healing — desperately — but they’re not riding the edge of a terrible choice. They’ve habituated themselves to vice — they’re beyond “choice.”
I don’t want to be mistaken for a man who feels compelled to constantly speak of women as if they’re helpless babes in the woods. Guys — indeed, young men who discover they’re on the cusp of fatherhood — are as often babes in the woods, contrary to a comparable delusion some women suffer that men are rightly expected to uniformly be sources of strength.
We all smell equally bad a couple days after our last shower.
Megan: “Rasqual: yep, pretty spot-on.”
Wow. So basically, I attempt to portray what I deem a just satire — and you embrace it. I think I’m offering a sound reductio ad absurdum of sorts, and you catch it as a pass and run for the goal.
:-/
Well, I have no idea what kind of reply to make to that.
Rasqual, I equally speechless at Megan’s reply. And this does not happen often.
Actually, I guess my only response — since you embrace the “mater familias” thing — is to note that you’re assuming the mantle of deity. No transcendent order determines human worth, no social order does either. It’s entirely on each and every person in the world to determine that their child has value.
What concerns me — among many other things here — is that birth is an arbitrary moment in the universe where you embrace that position. If you are the determinant of value before birth, you’re the determinant after birth. Or perhaps you cede some just role of society in forcing you not to act on your sense of a newborn’s worth, if you retroactively determine your original “choice” was in error (and why shouldn’t a subsequent corrective choice be as valid, since you’re the determiner of this little person’s value?), what the hell place has society in ascribing value that’s yours alone to mete or withhold?
Horrendous sh*t, Megan.
Rasqual, there has been no point in time when societies HAVEN’T play triage with people’s lives. My grandfather was killed in battle because, as an able-bodied young man, he was deemed sacrifice-worthy. Our country’s trade policies mean that halfway across the world, people will starve because foreign imports undermine the local agricultural system. In these instances, the span of time between decision and death is considerable; with abortion, you can watch it happen in a matter of days. That’s the only difference.
You’d be fooling yourself if you thought our society currently respects all life, at every stage. Maybe if you were a Jain, yes, but otherwise, no. And by bringing up abortion, I don’t mean to justify acts of war, or murder. I think the only time when ending a life is acceptable is when sustaining that life directly conflicts with somebody else’s fundamental rights, like personal autonomy/liberty.
1st:
If you think your mother skipped around picking daisies her entire pregnancy because you were wanted, you are lying to yourself. She went through with you what we all went through-which means, every pregnancy is different, but make no mistake-she experienced her own trials while carrying you.
2nd:
But X, you too are caught up in potentials. I’m sure everybody has the capacity to be a wonderful mother, father, friend, writer, musician, engineer.
No, I’m not. The fact that her father would fail miserably as a parental unit was no way to excuse any decision I would’ve made to have my daughter killed. No amount of poverty we experienced, no trauma or setback I experienced would’ve sufficed to legitimize ending my daughter’s life, because it wasn’t her “potential life”, it was her very real and completely actualized life, since something has to be alive in order to kill, no?
But laws can’t treat people as means to some kind of positive end; people’s futures can’t be decided by fiat. The fact that I might have deprived myself of “something truly great” should have no legal bearing.
And people can’t treat other people as means to some kind of positive end, either. “people’s futures can’t be decided by fiat.” Please take a moment to bask in the irony of you issuing your death edict for your child, presumably so that you can have the life you always wanted without having to wait for them to finish inconveniencing you. The fact you deprived yourself of something great SHOULDN’T have any legal bearing. You’re right. I only remarked upon it because it’s obvious you’re suffering as a consequence, and I’m sorry. What SHOULD have legal bearing is the life of your child deserved legal protection if you had designs on hurting them/ending their life.
Megan says: People should be brought into this world willingly, lovingly, and not by default because their mothers have no other option.
I agree with this statement. Of course, people are “brought into this world” when they are conceived, not born. Unless you believe the womb exists in some alternate world.
Megan: The most fundamental barricade against an instrumental view of life has been, is, and always will be maternity. This is the peculiar privilege and burden of womanhood — to keep the barbarians at the gates. It is not womanhood that opens this particular gate, Megan — it’s inhumanity.
That the remainder of society values life instrumentally is elementary. Part of being a member of society involves accepting being instrumental to others.
A womb is entirely unlike the crucible you take the world for (some of us believe that’s Someone’s good intention). Which is not to say that some women don’t receive Hell’s thermite as a gift of empowerment . . .
And Megan,
Your worldview completely leaves people like our friend Jack out in the cold. I think he is the best evidence there is that maternal want should not be treated as infallible fiat. If he was a surrogate for your child (or any “unwanted child”), and you for his mother seeking to abort him, I’m pretty certain his right to not be killed by his own mother would handily supersede his mother claiming any sort of right of “bodily autonomy”. But, as I mentioned earlier, I already knew that, since I have a daughter who is quite a bit more valuable than any right to “bodily autonomy” I’d have claimed. Especially because her birth was very easy and didn’t harm me in any way, shape, or form. I actually came away from having her HEALTHIER IN BODY than I was before becoming pregnant.
It bears repeating: Megan cannot, under any cost (even her soul, and she reminds us of this often) allow herself to think of her dead child as anything worth saving, defending, mothering. Her whole world is built upon the idea of her abortion as being one of the most righteous things she’s ever done.
She will not answer my question as to why she keeps coming back for more reminders, day in and day out, that she is a mother of a dead child. We will not remind her of anything else. We will not say, ever, Megan, for you I can see why it was a great idea. That whole bodily autonomy argument was made for you. No, our message is clear and strong and inviolable. So why?
Is JillStanek.com some sort of cyber pennance/self-flagellation? That’s all I can think. She needs to get her sh#$ off on people who only wanted her to not kill–why? It’s almost painful to watch, or read. But I feel like I have to stick around, if only for her son and daughter who did not get to meet his mother, and for Megan’s soul too, because nobody is beyond redemption.
Jake, you’re really not making it easy for me to cling to the (quickly disappearing) hope that you’ve not morphed back into a mere troll. I appreciate the genteel words to me (though I’m a bit wary of potential sarcasm), but: striding onto the forum merely to rant and rave is hardly a way to convince anyone to take you seriously. If you have a point to make, make it without the spittle-flecked histrionics; if the points are good and valid, they should be able to stand on their own, without the supporting “theatre”.
You wrote:
Sexually assaulting women in order to shame them against abortion is hateful in my eyes.
As well it should be; I agree, wholeheartedly, and I’d go further and say that sexual assault of *anyone*, for *any* reason, is always and everywhere gravely evil.
But have you not picked up on the fact that we disagree with your starting assumption (i.e. that a TVU is “sexual assault”, under the circumstances)? That claim is not only false: it’s ludicrous… and crassly inflammatory, at that.
Translated: when you claim it, you’re wrong.
Paladin: No, no, no! You’re still stuck in modernity, where “wrong” is a significant construct. It’s not about right and wrong — it’s about rights and laws. It’s not about a transcendent order where natures meet obligations and virtue and vice compete for human allegiance — it’s about the self and its assertions of gratuitous will.
Crazy primitives in these parts.
And didn’t you get the memo? Trolls are the new Gay!
Jake,
No, this does not meet the definition of sexual battery. Nobody is rounding up women, tying them down, and forcing them to get trans-vaginal ultrasounds.
Yes, abortion is legal. That does not automatically make it right. It was once legal to own slaves. It was once legal to deny women the right to vote.
Here are two things that disgust me:
1) It is legal to kill innocent children.
2) People are calling a voluntary medical test “rape” or “sexual assault”. This is completely disrespectful to those who truly have been raped. You should be ashamed of yourself.
You might want to look up the definition of the word “sane”.
Megan
Abortion is not a “right”.
If you don’t want people calling you crazy, then put a little more thought into your comments. Because right now, they’re not making you look too good. On the other hand, if you’re trying to look like a complete moron, you have achieved your goal
Rasqual: yep, pretty spot-on.
Megan may not have been abused in the way I was by my ex-husband or his family.
But I think she was abused.
It’s my guess (no, I’m not licensed) that she was reminded that she was a choice and that the message was sent in different ways over and over that she needs to be indebted forever to the almighty (lowercase a) person who had made the choice to allow her life to continue.
The bruises heal way faster than the emotional scars.
Thinking of you, Megan.
Wow, what crazy directions a conversation can go from being asked how we feel about a crappy comic strip drawn by a talent-less hack.
I was about to make a mild defense of Trudeau’s talent, but although I’ve followed him off and on over the years, his gifts really do pale in the shadow of the genius of his betters.
For now I’ll say just one name: Bill Watterson.
Well, since the years have passed and geek humor is come of age, I’ll add another: Randall Munroe
;-)
Both good calls, rasqual.
Ooh, xkcd fans. :D
Perhaps Trudeau has suffered the fate Watterson actively sought to avoid by getting out at the top of his game — living on retread ideas for the rest of a career that would tire his readers. This is why we pine for Watterson and generally forget to read Trudeau even if we’ve been his fans. Our last snapshot of Watterson made some of us cry (seriously). By contrast, just look at today’s Doonesbury. Seriously. Look at today’s.
If that isn’t a cliche, tired retread from Doonesbury, I don’t know what is.
I have never been sexually assaulted.
I have had a transvaginal ultrasound.
Having a transvaginal ultrasound is not sexual assault.
Rasqual: :) I am fittingly rebuked! However, you forgot the adjective “hide-bound” when describing primitives such as I…
And didn’t you get the memo? Trolls are the new Gay!
Ah. That would… explain much, and be deeply distressing, all at once!
You can disagree all you want. I posted the definition and I have read the definition. It meets the definition of sexual assault. You are forcing a woman to have this in order to have an abortion. You are forcing a woman to be sexually assaulted while she chooses to control her body. You can disagree all you want, but you are wrong.
Yes, we will disagree with you, Jake, because your claim is incorrect. Nobody is “forcing a woman to be sexually assaulted”. This test is completely voluntary. Nobody is tying these women down and forcing them to have it done.
Jake wrote:
You are forcing a woman to be sexually assaulted while she chooses to control her body.
Two problems with this:
1) She is not being sexually assaulted when she experiences a TVU. The claim is as ridiculous as would be a claim that I am being “assaulted” by every x-ray I’m given, while doing any procedure which warrants one.
2) If she were controlling only “her body”, Jake, you’d not hear a peep out of us, I think; it’s when she (or, more likely, those who are coercing her) “controls” the body of her unborn child that you’ll hear us object and fight… if, by “control”, you really mean “dismember, kill, and suck out in ragged pieces”. Honestly: what is so difficult about this distinction? It makes one suspect that you DO know the distinction, and you simply don’t care to hear it (i.e. you’re being dishonest).
Paladin did you read the definition?? Did you? It clearly meets the definition. Do you concede it might not be necessary in all cases to have this done when getting an abortion? Do you concede having this done, with no medical justification, therefore meets the definition I posted? Honestly, i can’t see how you can even argue it.
It meets the definition of sexual assault.
I didn’t look up a number, dial a phone, and make an appointment to schedule my sexual assaults, you ____________________!!!!
(The blank line should be filled in with the most vile name calling I can think of. Those who compare having an ultrasound to being raped are the biggest __________________s_!!!!)
Trudeau, Megan and Jake – Three more reasons to make abortion illegal.
Praxedes, it isn’t sexual assault if you consent or want it done. That’s like saying having sex, when consensual, is sexual assault. No one is making that claim. And no one is making the claim that consenting to or getting this ultrasound is always sexual assault. however, forcing someone to have it………..or forcing someone to have sex, well that’s a different story now isn’t it??
Jake, let me repeat this, slowly and calmly, so that you can answer it without distraction:
Who, exactly, is forcing the woman to have an abortion in the first place?
Paladin. The argument isn’t that people are forcing women to have an abortion. So let me state it slowly and clearly for you…the issue is they are forcing invasive ultrasounds on women. Stay on topic please.
Jake, You’ve never had an vaginal ultrasound. Have you ever been anally raped?
If you have, being held down and anally raped was the same as when you made an appointment, went to the clinic and your doctor gave you a rectal exam.
I’m thinking about lowering my emotional intelligence so I can fill in the blanks just for you, buddy.
Jake, if you’d like me (or anyone else) to take you seriously, lay off the snark; its only purpose is to cover weak arguments, or to be obnoxious… neither of which you should aspire to claim.
So, follow the logic: if no one (in the situation which you envision) is forcing a woman to kill her child by abortion, and if the TVU is only mandated when preparing for an abortion, then… surely it follows that no woman is being forced to “endure” a TVU… and therefore, your definition fails on at least one count?
As for your original claim (even if it were absolutely air-tight, which it is most certainly not–or else a punch in the teeth would qualify as “sexual battery”, so long as at least one finger or knuckle was within the oral cavity!), even your own definition says the following:
*Sexual Battery: Forced oral, anal, or vaginal penetration by any object, except when these acts are performed for bona fide medical purposes.
Perhaps you didn’t notice, but: locating the child in the womb (as well as detecting any other complications, such as ectopic pregnancies, tumors, etc.) is considered a “bona fide medical purpose”. Nowhere does even your definition require that it be “utterly indispensible in all cases”. Nowhere do your hysterics justify the portrayal of a TVU as “sexual battery” (which is insane). Are you unaware of the meanings of your own terms? “Bona fide” = “legitimate medical purpose”… not simply “procedure which passes Jake’s personal tastes regarding what he wishes to allow”. Apparently, you find it more of a “bona fide” medical procedure for an abortionist to stab blindly with a vacuum-powered curettage; fascinating.
Is my point a bit more clear, now?
…waiting for Jake to start complaining about the assault on the fetus.
“So, follow the logic: if no one (in the situation which you envision) is forcing a woman to kill her child by abortion, and if the TVU is only mandated when preparing for an abortion, then… surely it follows that no woman is being forced to “endure” a TVU… and therefore, your definition fails on at least one count?”
You’ve unwittingly made an argument for literally any superfluous procedure or action being legislatively mandated for all patients seeking an elective medical procedure that happens to have ended up in the crosshairs of a law-making body. Don’t want to “endure” a state-mandated enema from your proctologist? Then don’t have a colonoscopy!
“Perhaps you didn’t notice, but: locating the child in the womb (as well as detecting any other complications, such as ectopic pregnancies, tumors, etc.) is considered a “bona fide medical purpose”.”
The sole intent of mandatory ultrasound legislation is, quite pointedly, to deter women from having abortions, period. There is nothing approaching a “bona fide medical purpose” in that at all.
For those of us who view the child as a patient as well, deterring women from having abortions is a bona fide medical purpose.
The sole intent of mandatory ultrasound legislation is, quite pointedly, to deter women from having abortions, period.
If you believe this is the sole purpose behind this legislation, do you think it will work? Why or why not, joan?
Thank you Joan. It’s nice to see someone get it.
I have no idea why an ultrasound should discourage women from getting abortions any more than the procedure of the abortion itself should discourage women from getting abortions. It’s simply bizarre to wax histrionic about something as relatively benign in comparison with the abortion itself. And that’s prescinding entirely from the pro-life POV (Ex-GOP: sorry for the big word!).
Is a doctor using a tongue depressor “raping,” in this era where oral sex is on everyone’s lips, so to speak? I’d think so, by the standards our resident pinheads are applying.
“Is a doctor using a tongue depressor “raping,” in this era where oral sex is on everyone’s lips, so to speak? I’d think so, by the standards our resident pinheads are applying.”
Well, if a legislative body mandated the use of a tongue depressor as a precondition to undergoing a particular medical procedure WITHOUT making any reference to standard medical practice or the health of the patient, then yes, I’d consider the law to be a gross overreach.
“It’s simply bizarre to wax histrionic about something as relatively benign in comparison with the abortion itself.”
The ultrasound mandate sets very nasty precedents for both the intrusion of politics into medicine and state-sanctioned invasions of privacy. Also, it makes a really strong case for the fact that pro-lifers find something deeply disturbing about women having control over their bodies and reproductive lives.
“then yes, I’d consider the law to be a gross overreach.”
“Gross overreach” — why not use the word “rape?” Gross overreach is a perfectly legitimate opinion to have when the government starts tossing more laws our way. What’s in question is whether a medical procedure voluntarily consented to is “rape.”
Actually, what’s in question is whether laboring to converse with your resident toady and perennial mosquito Jake may be cruel and unusual punishment.
I rather doubt women not wanting ultrasounds actually want the abortion either. It’s not as if they got pregnant just so they could enthusiastically schedule one. That a person would prefer not to have a procedure with its attendant operations (undress, please. pee into this, please. walk on this treadmill for 10 minutes, please. bend over and cough, please) doesn’t mean that those operations, any more or less than the “wish I didn’t have to go through with this!” procedure itself, is some kind of “rape.”
We’re so often told that no woman wants an abortion. But women still seek them as a means to an end. Likewise with an ultrasound — even supposing it were legislative overreach, it’s not “rape” merely because a woman would prefer not having to undergo it any more than she’d prefer not having to take a day off work to do the abortion or any of a number of other things she’d rather not do.
“Also, it makes a really strong case for the fact that pro-lifers find something deeply disturbing about women having control over their bodies and reproductive lives.” A woman seeking an abortion is out of control, Megan. “Needing” an abortion is evidence of one kind of failure — and wanting one is evidence of another. Three wrongs do not make a right. They simply kill a life.
Megan says: People should be brought into this world willingly, lovingly, and not by default because their mothers have no other option.
Megan, Did your dad get a choice to willingly, lovingly, and not by default choose whether or not you lived or died? What about the financial burden of you put on him for 18 years?
“because their mothers have no other option”
Is this an unwitting anachronism, or a concession of some kind?
Mothers? At the moment of choice?
Or was that just a limitation on grammar’s flexibility, foisting phantom semantics?
“Gross overreach” — why not use the word “rape?”
What you described didn’t involve genital contact. If it had, I might have chosen different words.
When an individual undergoes a certain medical procedure in this country, she or he does so with good faith that all parts of the process are medically indicated and conform to the best standards of medical practice. THAT is what the patient consents to, broadly speaking. The intrusion of ideology and politics into medicine violates the fundamental patient-provider relationship. The patient consents to receiving evidence-based care, not to run through an obstacle course that politicians have laid down in front of a legal surgical procedure.
This particular bill mandates that abortion-seeking women be vaginally penetrated–with no reference to best practices or public health. It doesn’t matter if women are already planning to undergo an invasive medical procedure–this is very weak justification for the state to usurp the power of physicians to determine appropriate care.
Lawmakers don’t have to take a Hipppocratic Oath. Think about that.
Praxedes: no, it was not my father’s power to decide whether my mother got an abortion or ultimately gave birth to me. But he should have been able to legally abdicate responsibility for me while I was in the womb. Chaining fathers to their kids by their purse strings is not the best way to cultivate good fatherhood. Taking all the money spent chasing down deadbeat fathers and put it in a big pot for single mothers seems like a worthwihle decision.
For the record, I have a great relationship with my parents. I have great respect for the sacrifices they made to give me life and to raise me. What alternative vision of parenthood do you offer? Oh yeah, that embryos and fetuses are simply entitled to their parents’ bodies, and that any physical or emotional sacrifices their mothers make to bring them into this world is simply to be expected.
So yes, Megan, the unborn child is entitled to his or her mom’s body, as it is not the baby’s duty to die at the altar of his mom’s EGO.
You will never know the blessings of those physical and emotional sacrifices that moms make because in the end, you simply couldn’t be bothered.
Actually, what’s in question is whether laboring to converse with your resident toady and perennial mosquito Jake may be cruel and unusual punishment.
Haha!!
“This particular bill mandates that abortion-seeking women be vaginally penetrated–with no reference to best practices or public health. It doesn’t matter if women are already planning to undergo an invasive medical procedure…” Why didn’t you say “an invasive, vaginally penetrating and evacuating procedure?” Because it reduces the rhetorical force of what you’d prefer would remain an artificially inflated contrast between the invasiveness of the abortion itself and the relatively benign ultrasound — relative, that is, to the abortion itself? I mean, seriously — it’s rape to determine the gestational age of the fetus using an ultrasound, but what — a walk in the park to eviscerate, scrape and suck it out?
“Yes, but she wants to have the inchoate life torn from her uterus and shredded. Not so the ultrasound.”
So I don’t want a tongue depressor inserted in my mouth. I never do. Never. Ever. It’s not something I want to happen. And fine, that’s not genital — call it “assault” then. And see how stupid THAT sounds. I mean, we can move from one stupidity to another with fleet-footed nimbleness here, if we wish . . .
“I mean, seriously — it’s rape to determine the gestational age of the fetus using an ultrasound, but what — a walk in the park to eviscerate, scrape and suck it out?”
You are willfully, woefully missing the point. Patients consent to receiving evidence-based medical care, not to undergo procedures that politicans with 0 medical training decide they must experience in order to receive care. The ultrasound bill results in an invasion of two kinds: the intrusion of ideology in the medical sphere, and the penetration of people’s bodies with no medical justification. It really doesn’t matter whether you find abortion to be comparatively invasive or “icky.” That’s just inane.
The provider is beholden to his patient by the Hippocratic Oath; the lawmaker takes no similar vow. Really, have you thought about the implications these ultrasound bills could have on medical practice? Would you like me to lobby for a bill that demands all prostate exams be performed with three fingers rather than one, because…I said so? I mean, what’s two more fingers, right?
No one is ending another’s life during a prostate exam, Megs.
The Hippocratic Oath is renounced by all abortion providers by definition.
Lastly, abortion is not care. It’s DEATH.
Chaining fathers to their kids by their purse strings is not the best way to cultivate good fatherhood.
So if dad chooses to take off and not spend time with his child(ren), he should not be obligated to financially help out if he has the means and everyone knows where he is? What are your recommendations for cultivating good fatherhood for abusive, drunken men?
Oh I forgot, you want everyone else to pay for proabort’s sexual choices so it shouldn’t surprise me that you want everyone else to pay for deadbeat dads’ choices, too.
The people being responsible should become even more responsible than they already are for others’ irresponsibilities and those not being responsible should continue to expect more of the same. Got it.
EGV wrote, in reply to my comment:
You jumped into this argument when others had said that the law was plainly unconstitutional.
Hm. I’ll assume that the comment “jumped in” doesn’t seek to insinuate that I’m arguing from ignorance, or that I’d missed something critical to your case, or any other such allusion…
Based on previous Supreme Court decisions, this is not the case. It is open for interpretation. You seem to think I’m making a position on the constitutionality of it. I am not.
(*sigh*) My good sir, you make sweeping statements such as this, and then you tear your hair out in frustration when I go through your past remarks with a fine-tooth comb to show otherwise… on the pretext that “you simply can’t be expected to be exactingly careful with every last word, especially with three children, a job, etc., etc.” So, please let me know now: would you rather I go through your past comments to show otherwise, or would you prefer to abandon this particular claim of yours? It’s all one, to me…
I would like to correct you though when you say that “all catholic organizations which supply health services to the general public will be forced…to supply such evil THEMSELVES. That is not the case, until your wording is just vague.
(I assume you mean “unless?”)
It may be a minor quibble… but surely you realise that, by being forced to supply programs which include such evils, they’re being forced to supply the evils themselves (albeit not proximately, and indirectly)? And the so-called “compromise” by which health insurance (which, again, is NOT synonymous with “health care”–a distinction to remember, when considering the Catholic Church’s position on the matter) is mere smoke-and-mirrors, by which fungible money/costs are passed on by the insurance companies to their customers.
If you were to consider a mandatory “wellness plan” which allowed (by the aid of your premiums) neo-Nazis to call in a “Jew exterminator” to remove a “Jew infestation in the building”, perhaps you could see how such “remote and indirect support” is still utterly unacceptable. And I’ll thank you not to rejoin with the puerile lament of “but abortion is legal, and killing Jews is not!”; that is a mere accident of our culture (as Nazi Germany shows, quite well, since the slaughter of Jews was perfectly legal, then and there).
In my understanding, catholic health facilities will not be required to dispense contraceptions – just have them covered in health care plans.
See above. If it makes you feel better for me to say, instead, that “Catholic health (and other) facilities will be forced to supply the means by which contraceptives, abortifacients and sterilisations are acquired by their employees” (which is a bit like saying: “I didn’t shoot that man; I merely supplied the loaded gun to someone who had the stated intent to kill him!” It’s rather a distinction without a difference, morally speaking), then I’ll happily amend my comment… especially since it doesn’t help you case, one jot.
Any health care plan you are in now goes to a company that has other plans that have contraception in them (if you are insured by any major carrier).
But we are not yet mandated to offer those plans; true?
– Biblical laws against war? How bout thou shall not murder.
Not good enough, friend. Not only did Jesus never condemn war, per se (or demand that all soldiers abandon their jobs), but “murder” has an actual, specific definition: “the unjust and deliberately willed killing of another person”. One cannot “murder” by accident (morally speaking), nor can one “murder” someone whose death was just. In any case, you’ve shown nothing at all to prove that point.
I’m intentionally trying to be brief about this because I think you are trying to stray off topic
(*wry look*) How generous of you to assume so. Your memory is rather short, friend; do you not recall that this addressed the idea of “moral relativism”–i.e. going by your opinions and personal tastes, rather than by objective moral laws? I appealed only to Scripture because, in the past, that is the only authority to which you even tried to make an appeal (i.e. “show me in Scripture”). It’s hardly “off-topic”, and it’s hardly unfair for me to require that you live up to your own standards.
if a country simply wants to kill people, and as an agressor, invades their land and kills people, you don’t need to put together a long theological essay regarding the topic.
No argument, so far as that goes. But when you appeal to the 5th Commandment (i.e. “thou shalt not murder”), you really do need to fit the definition. “Countries” cannot commit murder; only individual people can do that. As I mentioned: I actually sympathise with you on this point (I hate war–though I acknowledge its necessity at times–and I find the death penalty to be mostly inexcusable, in most civilised circumstances); but sympathy does not substitute for logic and solid fact.
Now, why I say that is the original discussion, which I think is straying far from. I simply said this isn’t a slam dunk constitutional issue – there’s all sorts of things the government mandates, and has been upheld, that people might and do find offense to. Just because somebody finds offense doesn’t mean it is a slam dunk first amendment issue.
How many times must I repeat: it is not, nor has it ever been, my position that an issue is a “slam-dunk 1st Amendment issue” SIMPLY because someone takes offense at it? Surely you remember me saying this, before? Then why belabour a point which you know I don’t support?
If the government has a compelling reason, that is a factor.
All right, I’ll bite: what compelling reason does the government have for mandating contraceptives, abortifacients and sterilisations?
– I disagree on your statement regarding relativism. You seem to think I’d be better off if I simply jumped on the bandwagon and said “shame, this is a 100% violation of first amendment rights!”.
You’re missing my own point, rather completely: my comments about your relativism, while they do *touch* on this specific 1st Amendment topic, are not limited to this “1st Amendment” issue, at all! I see you as a relativist because I’ve seen you care for nothing (topical) and support nothing (topical) save through appeals to polls (“76% of [x] say thus-and-so… *tsk tsk*”), cynical appeals to pragmatism (“it’ll never change anyway, so why waste time fighting it?”), personal opinion (“I don’t like it, and if I had a magic wand, I’d ban it”), and the like. Not once have I seen you even acknowledge the valid existence of, to say nothing of any appeals to, any objective moral code at all. That, friend, is the basis for my comment. If I’m mistaken, I’ll gladly hear any solid evidence to the contrary.
I’ve said many a times, if I ran this country, abortion would illegal.
All right. Why? Given your own penchant for playing “devil’s advocate” 100% of the time for the abortion-tolerant side, I’d guess that you can critique your own (seemingly opinion-based) declaration of dictatorial power, here?
Sorry I’m not jumping on the contraception bandwagon – I don’t see a cut and dry Biblical case on it as something fundamental to Christianity.
Well… you don’t seem to see one for abortion, either; so I’m not quite sure what to say about that.
On the picking and choosing passages – should we legislate land distribution every 50 years?
(*sigh*) Perhaps you missed my comment about NOT picking and choosing passages? Is this your modus operandi: accuse someone of “picking and choosing”, and then forcing them to defend their “picks and choices”? Perhaps you might find pause in the fact that I deny the very charge?
So who cares? We disagree. Just because I support health care reform and think people should have insurance coverage doesn’t make me a relativist.
Your insensibility to irony is astonishing, friend. Let me highlight the salient parts:
“We disagree. Who cares? That doesn’t make me a relativist!”
Yes, it does, friend. A non-relativist would care about disagreements which touch upon fundamental issues (such as the murder of a child, or a governmental mandate to be “only the type of Christian we allow you to be, with all Christian activities approved by the state”); he would not simply say, “Ah! A disagreement! There must be no right answer! Up for grabs, everyone!”
It seems like you are threatened that I’m a Christian that doesn’t walk step in step in your political beliefs. I don’t understand that.
You misunderstand spectacularly, and your penchant for inflammatory and denigrating caricature of your opponents is in full show. My dear fellow, there’s no need to go on about anyone being “threatened” simply because they disagree vehemently with you! You flatter yourself, I’m afraid… and you really shouldn’t do that, especially at someone else’s expense. You might as well say that I am “threatened” by pro-abortion “Christians”… when, in fact, the right way to portray it would be “I am outraged by the fact that a Christian willfully permits an outrage that Christ forbids, and which common sense abhors.” Surely you don’t think that the only possible motive for disagreement (or even anger) is “craven fear” of some alleged “threat”? Have some sense, man.
No Praxedes, I was only referring to the prenatal period. If women can get abortions, it’s only fair that men can remove their support for the pregnancy by walking away. Let’s be real–this happens all the time, and the state spends way too much tracking down people who essentially amount to sperm donors. What kind of father will a man be who must be yoked into the position by financial extraction?
But since pregnancy and parenthood should be entirely voluntary, once a child is born, the mother and father–if he did not abdicate his fatherhood–are responsible for that child. If a man elects to become a father, then he best be expected to follow through with his duties.
I hope that clarifies things.
No Praxedes, I was only referring to the prenatal period. If women can get abortions, it’s only fair that men can remove their support for the pregnancy by walking away.
Uhhh…yeah. This isn’t an argument for allowing men to shirk on their responsibilities to their offspring. It’s an argument for making abortion illegal. Thanks though. Although, I do agree with you. That as long as abortion is legal, men should be able to step out if they want. It’s only fair. Just another reason abortion needs to be made illegal as soon as possible.
Also…I wonder how your parents reacted to your pregnancy. From what you say, it can’t have been good.
And lastly, you never answered me about whether or not you saw your child on ultrasound before they were killed in your abortion.
“If you believe this is the sole purpose behind this legislation, do you think it will work? Why or why not, joan?”
No, I don’t. Studies have shown that viewing ultrasound images is not an effective deterrent to abortion. So not only are these laws invasive and abusive, they don’t even work.
http://www.livescience.com/12886-abortion-sonogram-research.html
http://www.americanindependent.com/210411/ongoing-study-shows-ultrasounds-do-not-have-direct-impact-on-abortion-decision
I understand what you’re saying, Megan (and it’s nice to read reason rather than vitriol). As I said, concern about legislative overreach is certainly legitimate, and the argument is worth making. My brief is with the characterization Jake insists on, of “rape.” It’s not. It appears you know that. Maybe your toady (not your fault he’s kissing your feet, granted) will repent of his idiocy when he sees that you reject it yourself.
I’m not missing your point — I’m shootin’ for Jake’s.
First off, sexual assault was the definition I posted, not rape. I don’t speak for Megan, however I don’t know that she rejects the sexual assault argument. Whether she does or doesn’t, that doesn’t concern me. You have yet to make an argument that refutes my assertion and definition. This is assault when mandated for no medical reason.
Here I’ll post it again. And my apologies for saying assult not battery in my previous post.
*Sexual Battery: Forced oral, anal, or vaginal penetration by any object, except when these acts are performed for bona fide medical purposes.
So again I ask, do you concede that there may be a circumstance where this ultrasound is not needed for a bona fide medical purpose? If you do, then why isn’t this sexual battery?
And Furthermore, if you say that it always serves a bona fide medical purpose, then why the heck does it have to be legislated??
Thank you, Jake. Discounting the comparison without offering a reason is just as “reactionary” as pro-lifers claim the comparison itself to be.
Heaping requirements that aren’t medically indicated onto a procedure is the very definition of coercion. If a provider doesn’t feel it’s in the best interest of the patient to perform a TVU, but must do so because of the mandate, is this not a form of abuse? You haven’t provided any argument to the contracy except for, “Well, abortion’s gross and invasive and deadly to the fetus, so what’s a little unnecessary poking around with an ultrasound wand gonna do?”
Would you support a bill mandating that every abortion-seeking patient have sex with the provider before getting an abortion? I mean, she already had a penis up there, so what’s the big whoop?
Jake wrote:
*Sexual Battery: Forced oral, anal, or vaginal penetration by any object, except when these acts are performed for bona fide medical purposes.
And I’ll repeat again: not only is your definition rather spectacularly wrong, but the case of TVU doesn’t even satisfy it. Other than that, it goes quite swimmingly… (*wry look*)
First: the definition is so vague as to be ridiculous. For example: if someone stabs a person in the mouth [i.e. “forced oral penetration by any object”] with an ice-pick, for example, why on earth would you call that SEXUAL battery? What possible connection to sex does it have? “Battery”, certainly; but “sexual”? Do consider this reasonably!
Second: you fail to see that “bona fide” does not mean “Jake approves”, nor does “not bona fide” mean “Jake doesn’t approve”, nor does “bona fide” mean “absolutely required in all such circumstances”. The use of Novacain, for example, is a bona fide (i.e. legitimate, useful, and even expected) medical treatment when drilling a tooth; but this does not mean that it ceases to be “bona fide” if any such situation does not require it (e.g. someone is allergic to Novacain).
Is that clear? Your argument is vacuous and invalid, not only because it’s overly broad, but because you haven’t come close to showing that a TVU is “not a bona fide medical procedure” in such cases; all you’ve done is rage and complain loudly against it, using hysterical and exaggerated language… which simply doesn’t take the place of valid reasoning, no matter how much you amplify your volume or your hostility. Try again.
So again I ask, do you concede that there may be a circumstance where this ultrasound is not needed for a bona fide medical purpose?
Of course! I can name multitudes of cases where a TVU isn’t needed for a bona fide medical purpose! For example: it’s not needed when getting an eye exam, when getting one’s hearing checked, when having blood drawn for a test, when having one’s teeth cleaned, etc. It’s usually only in cases where an invasive procedure is planned for the uterus (especially when identifying the location of an unborn child in the uterus) that a TVU is warranted. An abortion certainly qualifies as such an “invasive procedure involving the uterus”, yes?
If you do, then why isn’t this sexual battery?
Because, my dear fellow, it doesn’t come close to fitting even a TRUE and ACCURATE definition of sexual battery (unlike your inadequate one).
And Furthermore, if you say that it always serves a bona fide medical purpose, then why the heck does it have to be legislated??
(*sigh*) Why, exactly, is it mandated that doctors carefully wash their hands before performing surgery, if it has a bona fide purpose? Answer that, and you’ll answer your own question, I think; we live (unfortunately) in a world where some irresponsible and/or ignorant medical professionals do not do what should be done (for whatever reason), and mandates are necessary to gain compliance.
Jake:
:::::::sigh::::::::
“Forced oral, anal, or vaginal penetration by any object, except when these acts are performed for bona fide medical purposes.”
Note the exception clause, Jake. Forced “except when,” yada yada. The definition is talking, in all cases, about involuntarily doing something to someone. The “except when” would be referring, as far as I can tell, to cases where a medical professional is obliged to force something for medical purposes, e.g., the patient is unconscious, delerious, etc. Nothing in this definition even approaches describing a scheduled visit for a voluntary procedure. The exceptions are speaking about involuntary medical acts — not something in addition to involuntary (forced) acts.
The exception clause isn’t talking about non-forced acts. It’s talking about forced acts done for medical purposes, as in an emergency where the patient cannot give consent.
Of course! I can name multitudes of cases where a TVU isn’t needed for a bona fide medical purpose! For example: it’s not needed when getting an eye exam, when getting one’s hearing checked, when having blood drawn for a test, when having one’s teeth cleaned, etc. It’s usually only in cases where an invasive procedure is planned for the uterus (especially when identifying the location of an unborn child in the uterus) that a TVU is warranted. An abortion certainly qualifies as such an “invasive procedure involving the uterus”, yes?
Just so I am clear, you are saying that a TVU is warranted whenever an invasive procedure is planned for the uterus, and that this legislation is being introduced to prevent “irresponsible and/or ignorant medical professionals who do not do what should be done (for whatever reason)”
Is this your argument? And you can say with a straight face that this legislation is only being introduced for this reason alone??? Really??? Not in order to shame a woman out of an abortion??
If that is your argument, then you are defending it as bonafide medical procedure done to protect women against irresponsible medical professionals. So Megan’s concern that legislatures, who have zero medical experience and are now dictating medical practice, doesn’t concern you at all??
Not in order to shame a woman out of an abortion??
How can you shame a woman out of a medical procedure? What could possibly be so shameful about any medical procedure?”
“Oh my God! I just saw my brain tumor. Don’t remove it, please!”
“Heavens to Betsy! Now that I saw my colon polyp, I want to keep it!”
“Now that I’ve seen a photo of that huge wart on my back, you best leave it be!”
If there were nothing inherently wrong with aborting your child, you’d have no probs with the ultrasound. After all, abortion is just another common medical procedure.
Praxades, If you tell me I need to have prostate exam just for fun when I go into have my tonsils removed, yeah I will have a problem with that. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with having my tonsils removed (a possibly necessary procedure like abortion), but it doesn’t mean you or anyone else can violate the rest of my body for no reason at all. But way to simplify the argument to make a completely nonsensical point.
Jake, please consider stopping your fostering of the rape culture in our country.
It would be sincerely appreciated by true rape survivors. Thanks.
Jake wrote, in reply to my comment:
Just so I am clear, you are saying that a TVU is warranted whenever an invasive procedure is planned for the uterus,
“Usually” (note the qualifier, in case of unforeseen circumstances, etc.), yes.
and that this legislation is being introduced to prevent “irresponsible and/or ignorant medical professionals who do not do what should be done (for whatever reason)”
Yes. You *are* aware of the fact that the use of the TVU predates this particular legislation, are you not?
Is this your argument?
With the stated qualifiers, yes.
And you can say with a straight face
:) Wouldn’t you like to know? (All kidding aside: yes, I can.)
that this legislation is only being introduced for this reason alone???
Why would that be necessary? Many laws are introduced for numerous (simultaneous) reasons; if it happens to have another purpose aside from the ostensible objective, why is that a problem?
Example: it is mandated that doctors wash their hands before surgery. Not only does this prevent cross-contamination between patients, but it also helps preserve the health of the doctor and the staff. Would you erupt into wild-eyed histrionics over the fact that such an additional “reason” was uncovered? Would you stand atop your desk and howl about the hypocrisy of those who mandated the hand-washing, on the basis that “we now know they did it only to save their own selfish skins, and not for patient benefit”?
Do think about this reasonably, friend.
Really???
Really. (Do go easy on the question mark and exclamation point keys, friend; they’re not invincible!)
Not in order to shame a woman out of an abortion??
Why would it be “shameful” in the first place? Would an ultrasound of a tumour of mine “shame” me into refusing the surgery to have it removed? Have some sense! Are you truly incapable of imagining the possibility (in addition to any other scenarios) that the location, volume, etc., of the unborn child is not completely irrelevant even to such an evil procedure as an abortion?
If that is your argument, then you are defending it as bonafide medical procedure done to protect women against irresponsible medical professionals.
Yes, among other possible benefits; certainly.
So Megan’s concern that legislatures, who have zero medical experience and are now dictating medical practice, doesn’t concern you at all??
Oh, come now! Do calm down and consider this logically:
The legislature did not invent this procedure, nor did the legislature invent the idea of using a TVU before/during an abortion. If TVU use were a brand-new procedure invented solely by legislators (i.e. not by doctors, beforehand) with no medical experience, created out of whole cloth, at the very instant that the legislation was introduced, then I would share your concern. But your concern, and Megan’s, are stuff and nonsense; you might as well accuse Congress of inventing hand-washing, simply to “shame doctors into meeting the fastidious standards of cleanliness imposed by patriarchal, proto-Judeo-Christian, Pharisaical tyrants”! As Rasqual might say: this is the stuff of lunacy, not of reasoned argument. Do step back, and re-think this matter, will you?
Jake: “Praxades, If you tell me I need to have prostate exam just for fun when I go into have my tonsils removed, yeah I will have a problem with that. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with having my tonsils removed (a possibly necessary procedure like abortion), but it doesn’t mean you or anyone else can violate the rest of my body for no reason at all. But way to simplify the argument to make a completely nonsensical point.”
This is exquisite nonsense. The relationship between a TVU and the abortion is certainly proximate, and TVUs are frequently used already. But while criticizing others for simplifying arguments to make a point, Jake simplifies away the logical, physical, and medical connection between TVU’s purpose and abortion until, we’re to suppose, these bear as much relation to each other as a prostate exam and a tonsillectomy.
All Jake has to do, apparently, is pretend a TVU and an abortion are as unrelated as a prostate exam and a tonsillectomy, and like magic! He’s qualified to criticize others for simplifying an argument to make a point!
LOL
Jake, I have a suggestion. Your cart-steering-the-horse sophistry doesn’t work, because you haven’t learned that propaganda has to at least plausibly approximate what others imagine might, possibly, be the case. You would find, I think, it much easier to strike for what’s true before attempting to employ what you take for reason in a mercenary way.
“If there were nothing inherently wrong with aborting your child, you’d have no probs with the ultrasound. After all, abortion is just another common medical procedure.”
…and as with any common medical procedure, a woman seeking an abortion is entitled to receive care that adheres at every point to standard medical practice, not to the dictates of some politician. That TVUs are indicated “most of the time” or that abortion is “already” an invasive procedure are weak excuses for the state usurping the power of medical authorities.
Again, this bill made no reference to the health or well-being of the mother. It made no reference to standard medical practices. Hand-washing mandates can be, and are, supported by good medical science. “Because you want the woman to see her fetus” isn’t a darn good enough reason for passing a law like this.
Megs–what other nonsense do you tell yourself day in and day out to justify the killing of your baby? How far are you willing to go?? Because here, at least, it makes no sense.
I, for one, could care less about the medical justifications for a vaginal ultrasound. I will tell the truth: you absolutely ought to look at the one you’re about to execute for the sake of your degree. If you didn’t see your baby, Megs, how would you know what you did? Because you still
DO NOT KNOW.
OMGosh did I just read that Megan wrote “unborn children”?!!!
“I will tell the truth: you absolutely ought to look at the one you’re about to execute for the sake of your degree.”
What does that accomplish? We already know that mandatory ultrasounds don’t deter women from going ahead with their abortions. You seem to savor the thought of making them as uncomfortable as possible, just for its own sake. That’s downright sadistic.
joan: “We already know that mandatory ultrasounds don’t deter women from going ahead with their abortions. You seem to savor the thought of making them as uncomfortable as possible, just for its own sake. That’s downright sadistic.“
It’s difficult to take seriously the idea that a woman can merrily whistle through having her unborn child scraped out of her, but an ultrasound is going to propel her into a wrenching existential crisis. To the horrendous act of abortion one adds the relatively (relative to the abortion itself) incremental inconvenience of an ultrasound. And the incremental act is the cruel thing? Please. Validating women who kill their own children is the cruelty. Performing the abortion as a “service” is the cruel thing. The magnitude of the two acts could not possibly be more different.
If an added measure of safety is afforded women (in view of previous instances of careless practice by abortionists) by requiring that abortionists perform ultrasounds, then the state may have a compelling interest.
Its a cliche, but it bears repeating: I had my wisdom teeth removed. In the consultation prior to the procedure, the dental surgeon showed me the x-rays of them, in fact they were visible to me for an extended time period. Was he a sadist?
“I, for one, could care less about the medical justifications for a vaginal ultrasound.”
That’s a wonderful rationale for passing a bill that vests lawmakers with the decision-making authority that physicians take 10+ years to attain. That’s sound science right there.
“Because you still DO NOT KNOW.”
Ah, then I offer proof that ultrasounds aren’t great deterrents for women who really, really want to end their pregnancies.
Please, I’m beggin’ ya! Let both Trudeau and this thread retire! ;)
“It’s difficult to take seriously the idea that a woman can merrily whistle through having her unborn child scraped out of her, but an ultrasound is going to propel her into a wrenching existential crisis.”
I never suggested it would. That’s the implication of Courtney’s stated desire to have women “look at the one [they’re] about to execute”. She seems to believe that requiring women to view ultrasound images will stir up some latent guilt or shame over the procedure, or at the very least, make them very uncomfortable, but as we’ve already established, that isn’t enough to deter them from going through with it. So what then, are you left with? A woman who has already resolved to have her abortion and will not be dissuaded from doing so, but feels worse about it? (Not to mention shouldering the additional cost of having an ultrasound that may otherwise have not been deemed necessary, which of course is passed on to the patient, many of whom are poor to begin with.) Someone who sees that as a valid goal evinces sadistic tendencies or something close to it, in my book.
“If an added measure of safety is afforded women (in view of previous instances of careless practice by abortionists) by requiring that abortionists perform ultrasounds, then the state may have a compelling interest.”
That might be enough for a court, but when has this debate turned on legal minutiae?
“Its a cliche, but it bears repeating: I had my wisdom teeth removed. In the consultation prior to the procedure, the dental surgeon showed me the x-rays of them, in fact they were visible to me for an extended time period. Was he a sadist?”
Was he showing them in an effort to make you feel guilty about having them removed? If so, yes, and you should get a new dentist.
“the dental surgeon showed me the x-rays of them, in fact they were visible to me for an extended time period. Was he a sadist?”
Was the procedure medically-indicated? Did a law force the hand of your surgeon to do something that might have been against his better judgment? Really, the distinction here isn’t that hard to grasp. You wouldn’t have difficulty grasping it if it had to do with your body. But once again, women making decisions you don’t like are fair game for all sorts of intrusion and punishment.
Again, this bill made no reference to the health or well-being of the mother.
Mother? What mother? How can there be a mother if there is no child?
That makes you a mother of a dead child, Megan. Your child that you choiced to death.
But don’t let us make you feel guilty. Coming here day after lonely day in sad attempts to defend your choice speaks for itself.
Blah, blah blah. I’ll send you the ultrasound picture so you can say a hail mary over it and then use it as a tool for indoctrinating more 15-year-olds.
Missing the point are we? It’s not even humanly possible to shame someone with a picture of a tooth. My point was why would this induce shame/guilt/suffering or anything if it’s not even wrong. Oh, but I really love bringing up the old it’s not you’re body blah blah blah you’re not a woman. I guess the reason some women support this is________
I guess the next time I hear of a murder, its just someone making a decision I don’t like.
Indoctrinating 15 year olds? I guess it’s indoctrination when it’s something YOU don’t agree with.
Joan: “That might be enough for a court, but when has this debate turned on legal minutiae?”
I dunno, I thought we were talking about a law. Some folks in the discussion want to obsess about whether women are shamed or not. My own interest was in watching clown-boy Jake slapping about in his big floppy shoes.
Joan, thanks for reminding me of the cost angle. Basic economic theory tells us less of something is demanded at higher prices, so maybe it will reduce abortions through that channel.
Hans, I would like to let this thread retire, but it’s just so addictive. For some reason I just can’t stop coming back.
JDC,
Just be sure to turn the lights off when you leave. :)
Hans wrote:
Please, I’m beggin’ ya! Let both Trudeau and this thread retire!
Would you mind if we compromised, and simply had Trudeau retire? :)
Blah, blah blah. I’ll send you the ultrasound picture so you can say a hail mary over it and then use it as a tool for indoctrinating more 15-year-olds.
Really, Megan? You kept the ultrasound picture of your baby? Why?
Who turned off the light? Oh, there it is. (:
Blah, blah blah. I’ll send you the ultrasound picture so you can say a hail mary over it and then use it as a tool for indoctrinating more 15-year-olds.
Don’t feel that you need to send the picture, Meg. The students I work with have seen both before and after abortion photos already and some are younger than 15.
I’ll let them know about this thread though so they can see for themselves how angry, vile, blaming, rationalizing and bitter post-abortive woman and their proabort male cheerleaders can become. And then we’ll say a few Hail Mary’s for all proaborts.
Peace be with you, Megan.
Insane is if you think it’s evil to have a human in the womb killed and it’s sane to think it’s right and good to have the human in the womb killed? Jack, thanks for the clarification.
Doe, I think you meant Jake.
Paladin,
Would you mind if we compromised, and simply had Trudeau retire?
Any day of the week. Tomorrow, hopefully.
Jack: And I don’t think its right to paint all pro-choice men like that, either. I certainly don’t think Doug and Hal are horrible people. But sure, everyone can just further polarize and demonize everyone else. THAT will get the country somewhere.
Good point, Jack, and thanks. Some people have the need to demonize people on the other side of an argument – this certainly applies to pro-choicers as well as pro-lifers.
I imagine this has been true for tens of thousands of years.
Some people have the need to demonize people on the other side of an argument – this certainly applies to pro-choicers as well as pro-lifers.
And some people have the need to demonize unborn humans – this certainly only applies to proaborts though.
Peace, Doug.
Praxedes: And some people have the need to demonize unborn humans – this certainly only applies to proaborts though.
Yeah, or not. Any real “demonizing,” there, would be pretty silly, anyway.
Also, being unwanted, being non-sentient, etc., is not the same as being a “demon.”